Deconstruction
by elliott ashes
Summary: AU. At age 17, Akito Sohma attempts to escape a chaotic past and a troubled family by moving to a new city. But when Tohru Honda comes into Akito's life, memories come back as the teenagers face their futures. Contains het and shojo ai pairings.
1. I: City Girl

Warnings: Spoilers for volume 17, AU, femmeslash, het, angst, eating disorder content, language, possible violence, mental illness, probably more things I've forgotten.

A/N: If that hasn't scared you away, I would like to thank you for taking the time to click on my story. I hope you enjoy reading it. This is actually one of the most personal things I've written, so reviews are greatly appreciated (but please be nice - constructive criticism is always appreciated, but don't waste my time with personal abuse). Past tense means a flashback, and the rest of the story is told in present tense. Sorry about the OC - she probably won't be in this much longer, but she's relevant to the plot, really. Sorry if it's too OOC - I was trying to write a what-might-have-been fic, and to write what I know. Akito will act more like herself in upcoming chapters, I promise.

Disclaimer: I don't own Fruits Basket or any of its wonderful characters. The chapter title comes from a song by Tegan and Sara.

Deconstruction  
I: City Girl

She has an eye-catching face. I notice her immediately while I'm half-looking out the window on the passenger side of the rental car. Dark brown hair cut just above shoulder length, edgy bangs. Straight – her hair, I mean. Dark sunglasses hide her eyes, and her mouth is a deep red slash, vivid against her milky skin. My eyes travel lower. Black dress which stops just above her knees, long black jacket thrown over. Tall, elegant body made taller by the high, shiny black boots she wears. In one of her hands, she holds the leash to a large, friendly-looking dog – black, of course. I wondered how she is allowed to have the animal with her, on the patio of what is clearly an expensive downtown restaurant.

She's laughing. A group of twenty-somethings (funny - at first glance I thought she was younger), obviously her friends, are gathered around her, engaged in lively conversation.

A girl like that would never even talk to me. I turn away, but I don't have to – she is already out of view, remaining oblivious to me, just seconds ago, having been just meters away from her. I watch the white stripes pass underneath the vehicle as the road takes me father and farther away from her.

And, hopefully, farther and farther away from my life up until this point.

"Are we almost there, Tori?" I ask, fighting to keep my voice cool, fighting That Woman's blood inside me that makes me want to scream at him just for the sake of catharsis.

Eyes still fixed directly ahead, he nods. "It's just a few blocks."

I shut my eyes and try to put That Woman and the sunglasses girl out of mind.

-/-/-/-

"Well, this is it." Hatori looks at me, offers the key. I grab it from his fingers. "Happy?"

I look around the apartment. It's small – the bedroom and kitchen directly attached, and a closet-sized washroom off to the side. Low ceiling, dirty white walls. Lights that are already stinging my eyes. Inflatable mattress, microwave, blue plastic table-type-thingy, single bent metal chair like low-budget ones in schools.

Mine.

"It's great," I say, trying to keep my voice low, level, but I honestly do appreciate this. I flop down on the mattress, and it sinks so that I can feel the floor beneath me. I'll need to add more air.

Something catches my eye. I stand up, walk over to what looks like – and sure enough, it is – a small window, hidden by white blinds that match the walls. I push the fabric away and look.

Past the smeared glass pane, brown skyscrapers stretch up from the grey pavement to the overlapping grey layers of clouds. Down below, cars navigate the roads like rows of glittering beetles. The sun is out of view, but I can tell it is setting from the orange silhouettes of some of the buildings.

A hand touches my shoulder, and I can't stop my natural reflex to cringe, even though I know it is only my cousin Tori – one of the few people in my life who has actually looked after and looked out for me. "I got you a radio, as an apartment-warming gift."

He hands me a small black box covered in buttons. Glowing red digits tell me it's 5:00 PM. I already feel exhausted. I set the radio-clock on the table and begin fiddling with it. I slide my finger along the volume dial, setting it on maximum, and begin shifting through stations. Classical. Pop punk. I settle on one playing an indie rock song I've never heard before. Cheerful acoustic guitar and a detached, high male voice with a strange accent reverberates through the small apartment. My small apartment.

"I'm glad you like it," says Hatori.

"Thanks." I can't looks at him. I don't know how to say things like this. "Really."

"It's not a problem." I know he's lying. Isn't he going to leave? I wait, and he begins walking to the door. "Akito? Are you coming?"

"What? Where?"

"It's your first day in the city. Don't you want me to show you around?"

I turn off the radio. "Yeah. Sure – I guess. Right now?"

"Yes."

I'm careful to make sure the door is locked behind me. We walk the crowded streets, Tori pointing out restaurants and clothing stores. We go into a few places, and I find a green belt and a pair of baggy black jeans that I like. I would have made a note to go back and get them when I have a job and some spare cash, but Hatori buys them for me – more apartment-warming gifts. I feel guilty for accepting, and remind myself to pay him back in the future. We also stop into some of the food places. I didn't plan on eating tonight, but I manage to consume an egg roll, a bowl of miso soup, and some fries with ketchup, between the various places, hoping this will assuage the concern Tori's always voicing that I don't eat enough.

-/-/-/-

Tori and I got our first girlfriends around the same time. But since he was a 17-year-old guy and I was a 14-year-old girl, our experiences really didn't have much else in common. Well, aside from the fact that they both ended badly and brought even more complications into our lives.

I was in ninth grade, and by this point I had already realized I wasn't "normal." What I was trying to figure out was what exactly that meant.

People whispered whenever I walked down the hall. I couldn't eat in front of anyone else. I'd frequently get so nervous during or before social situations that I'd have to run to the washroom and vomit. My mom would go into crazy fits where she'd throw things at me and tell me how worthless I was.

She told me it was my fault my father had died.

I hated school. I hated home more.

I wore layered clothes that covered as much of me as possible. This served several purposes. No one would see injuries and ask awkward questions or drag the school administration into my life. It would reduce the number of comments on my weight.

And I was always cold, anyway.

Some people still stared at me. _Is that a boy or a girl? _I'd hear them laughing.

At lunch hour I did homework in empty classrooms. Before and after gym class I'd change in a stall in the girl's washroom when the room was empty.

That's how I met Nikki. I'd just changed into my gym clothes, leaving two long-sleeved black shirts on underneath, and was leaving the stall with my jeans and two hoodies bundled under my arm, when I froze dead in my tracks.

I hadn't heard her come in. A girl with short, messy blond hair, wearing black clothes covered in band names, was applying make-up in the mirror. Her reflection was looking right at me. I wanted to quickly duck back into the stall, but she'd already seen me. If I ran out of the room she might follow. Or tell her friends what a freak I was.

"Hey," she said, in the soft, rough voice the kids who'd been smoking off campus every lunch hour for years had, "Akito Sohma, right?"

I'd never seen her before. Why did she know my name? Did people talk about me that much? "Yeah," I said. At least she wasn't freaking out. Not even a_ Hey, you're in the wrong bathroom. _ I set my clothes on the counter and began washing my hands at the sink beside her, aiming for the same nonchalance she possessed. Just standing so close to her, a jolt of electricity went through me. It was like all my senses were heightened, but I could only concentrate on her. I was taller than her, and could see the top of her head. Her white-blond hair was dyed – the roots were dark brown. She wore a lot of dark eye make-up I didn't know the name for. Her eyes were a sharp ocean blue. She smelled like smoke and flowery perfume.

I'd never felt this way before, not this intensely. It scared me because I liked it.

"I'm Nikki Rassin."

"Nice to meet you." I was buzzing inside, trying not to let it show.

"What class do you have?"

"Gym."

"Lame, isn't it?"

"Yeah."

"I've got a math test and didn't study." She smiled and I returned it awkwardly. "Hey, want to skip together?"

I didn't skip class. I came to school when I was so sick it felt like I was dying. I avoided social situations for homework. "Sure," I said.

No one stopped us as we walked off the grounds, and Nikki seemed so confident I eventually stopped looking over my shoulder. We went to the fast food place where I paid for everything and Nikki said she'd pay me back and I said she didn't have to. I managed to eat a burger, savoring the taste of pickles and ketchup. Then we went into random shops where Nikki stole some jewelry and socks and pins with band names on them even though I offered to pay. I was too scared to take anything.

We talked. About stupid kids and teachers who were always judging us. About music. About weird things that happened in our lives. To my 14-year-old self, she sounded like she knew so much about the world.

She was my first real friend. We started to spend a lot of time together. At lunch hour, after school, when we skipped class. I met her friends, who were okay, but they all seemed kind of one-dimensional to me. Black clothes, lots of makeup on both males and females, fast food-eaters, smokers, shoplifters. I was never really close to them. But when Nikki and I started dating, she told them, and they were supportive, and I was so grateful. Even though they kept using homophobic slurs, these didn't apply to us – only people they didn't like, who were usually straight anyway.

Even though Nikki would probably be stereotyped as one of the "bad kids," she couldn't be summed up like that. She never made me do anything I didn't want to do. She actually cared about me, didn't just pretend to. She was genuinely _nice _to me.

"Isn't it bullshit?" she said one day, after a school assembly. We were lying on this big hill near the school where we sometimes went. Hardly anyone else knew about it, so we could be alone together. It offered a panoramic view of the sky above and the town down below. It was almost winter, and the grass we were lying on was yellowing and crispy. It was already starting to get dark, and the tiny houses' lights were going on, white and orange, reflecting on the underbellies of the layered clouds. Nikki was lying beside be, one hand around my shoulders, the other absently playing with my hair. I could hear her breathing. She felt warm against me.

Nikki seemed to think a lot of things were bullshit, so I asked what she meant.

"I mean," she said, "like, that whole speech they gave us. About how school prepares us for life." She laughed. "Who cares? I don't want to be prepared for life. I want to _live _life."

I thought I knew what she meant. "Yeah. Everything's so controlled it's hard to know what's real."

She kissed me. She tasted like smoke and bubblegum. "This is real," she whispered.

-/-/-/-

I apply for a job at the bubble tea place in the mall, just because it's close to my apartment and they had a "Now Hiring" sign up. I'm not as nervous around people as I was a few years ago, so I should be able to do this. A day later, I get a phone call notifying me that I've been hired and can begin work as soon as possible. I work a long shift, full time on weekends and part time on days when I will have school when it starts. Two people work the same shift as I – a tiny red-haired girl with braces who looks around twelve but is actually the same age as I, 17, and a pale geeky 15-year-old boy with blond hair that is always getting in his eyes and in customers' orders. He lives in fear of mispronouncing my name, and thus always refers to me as "sir."

I'm in the middle of taking an order when my cell phone rings. "Wait," I tell the customer, ducking into the back of the shop to answer, although I'm not sure if I should. Who would be calling me? Unless That Woman somehow got my number, after I changed it specifically so she would stop calling me…

"Akito Sohma speaking?"

"Akito, your school just called me." It's Tori.

"Why?" It didn't even start yet. How can I be in trouble already?

"I'm listed as your guardian. They notified me that your transcript has been finalized."

"What's that mean?"

"You can start attending classes as soon as you're ready. They've emailed you your schedule."

"As soon as I'm ready… so, like tomorrow?"

"If you wish."

I never would have expected it, but in the time I've been in the city I've actually been kind of lonely much of the time. I spend my non-working hours wandering around downtown, looking at things I can't afford to buy, or I stay in my apartment – listening to the radio and reading books I've taken out from the library. At the thought of school, a rush of unrealistic possibilities takes over my mind – friends. Dating. University. Normalcy. Happiness.

"I'll go. Thanks, Tori."

"You're welcome."

"I've got to get back to work."


	2. II: Consequence of Sounds

A/N: I would like to thank dishrag-chan, Musa Rox and StrawberryAkito (cool name! Your English is really good, too!) for their reviews. Since these things have been pointed out, I should probably clarify. One: People in this new city do not know Akito is a girl. Nikki and her friends knew, but Akito has left them behind. Two: This is Akito/Tohru shojo-ai. In other words, a female/female pairing (I accidentally called it femmeslash in the last author's note, but it's the same idea). Three: I wrote this story partially as an experiment to see how the characters would behave in different situations. This accounts for why characters might dress differently than in the manga, and sometimes act in ways that appear out of character. My goal is to tie this fic together and show many different sides of the characters. Hopefully in the end all their behavior will make sense in context. Sorry about the really long author's note. Please review and let me know how the chapter is.

**Deconstruction**  
**II: Consequence of Sounds**

_"And I absorb back in  
The words right through my skin"_  
- Regina Spektor

**Tohru**

"Tohru, you okay?"

"Huh? Oh, yes. Thank you. Why?"

"You kind of zoned out there for a moment."

"Oh… I'm sorry."

"What were you thinking about?"

"That… that girl. Did you see her?"

"Who?"

"The one who just drove by."

"You mean the person with the black hair?"

"Yeah."

"That was a guy, Tohru. Are you blind? I-I mean… sorry, I forgot."

"It's okay." I smile. "I know you didn't mean anything by it."

Caylee still seems embarrassed. She adds quietly, "Really, I'm sorry. You're too forgiving."

I change the topic.

**Akito**

The school hallways are horribly crowded. I thought I would be able to handle this, but now I'm not so sure. I get jostled several times, and I can feel their eyes on me. Being so close to these strangers, being touched however briefly and accidentally… it makes me feel sick. I stick my hands deeper into the warmth of the pockets of my black hoodie. I'm still shaking. I continue walking. Almost to my class - art, room 158. I pass by room 152, 154, 156, next has to be…

161? Looking back, I realize I have no idea where to turn. Did I miss the room number, hidden behind this wave of bodies? All these people are starting to blur together, forming a swirling mass of clashing colours that obscures my vision. The world looks like it's spinning, everything shifting like sand, almost pixilated. I can't remember how to stand up straight, and end up falling into something warm and dark.

"H-hey! Yo, are you okay?"

Looking up, I find myself staring into the panicked face of an orange-haired boy. Realizing I'm leaning against his black t-shirt, I move so hastily I practically jump back.

"Watch where you're going!" I say.

He looks blank, then his expression changes to one of anger. "What's your problem? You bumped into me!"

"You should have been more careful," I counter, trying to hide the weakness of my argument behind a cold tone. Why am I picking fights already? Do I need to make enemies so soon after moving here? It's like I've got some innate instinct to obliterate any positive aspects of my social life that could possibly manifest.

He turns away from me. "Whatever," he says, walking away. "I don't waste my time talking to people like you."

"Wait!" I call after him. He halts, but doesn't turn to look at me. "Do you know how to get to room 158?"

He turns his face to meet my gaze, expression unreadable – or at least, I can't read it. I've really got no skill at this. He probably can't figure out how I have the nerve to ask him for help after being so antagonistic. He can thank That Woman's DNA for this little mood swing.

To my surprise, he begins walking in my direction again. With long, purposeful strides, he continues past me. "You comin'?" he asks. I have to jog to keep up, but he leads me through a pair of unnumbered doors, and we emerge in a small hallway. A row of doors awaits us, adorned with the numbers 157 through 160.

The orange-haired boy is already walking away. "Thanks!" I call after him quickly.

"Yeah, sure," he says.

On impulse, I say, "What's your name?"

"Kyo Sohma," he says, before the double doors swing shut behind him.

-/-/-/-

Hatori was the first one I told about Nikki. He and I had always been close; he lived nearby, and took it upon himself to make sure I was safe from my mother. He couldn't protect me 24/7, of course, but he stopped by often, and I would always tell him I was fine. When That Woman was in one of her wilder fits, Hatori would come by the house and pick me up – sometimes I called him, but mostly he just knew. Maybe he had one of the neighbors notify him whenever loud noises were coming from the house. I never found out for sure.

I looked forward to these outings. Having long since grown desensitized to my mother's volatile outbursts, I enjoyed having someone I was able to talk to without feeling nervous or having to hide anything. Although I took great care to conceal my injuries, that was because I didn't want him to worry, not because I had to. I think he saw through the act anyway.

It was during one such excursion that I'd told him. We'd gone out to an Italian restaurant that Tori obviously would have to spend hours working to pay off the cost for, despite me not having ordered anything except a glass of water.

I couldn't figure out why I was so nervous. I'd been planning this for weeks, and I knew I had to tell him. Even if I wasn't exactly lying, keeping this from him felt like I was denying a part of myself. But now that I had the perfect opportunity, my insides felt like they were twisting into knots. How could a few words be so hard to say? I knew some people reacted badly to these things, I was familiar with all the horror stories about losing everything, but this was _Tori. _Surely things couldn't change between us that much… could they?

I noticed he ordered far more food than he could possibly eat, no doubt hoping I'd change my mind and share some.

"So," I said, "anything new going on in your life?" I was so creative at initiating conversation, wasn't I?

"Yes, actually," he answered after a moment. "I met this girl at work." Tori worked at the hospital to gain experience. After high school, he was going to university to become a doctor. "Her name is Kana. We've been going out."

"She's Japanese?" I said. The name sounded like it was, but I couldn't be sure. We didn't have many Japanese people in the town. There were a few Chinese families, but, as all the Asians who lived here spent a great deal of time explaining, that wasn't the same thing.

"Third generation Canadian, but yes, her grandparents immigrated."

"How long have you been seeing her?"

"Three weeks or so."

"What's she like?"

"She's… she's great. Really smart and interesting. She's also studying to be a doctor." He looked at me oddly. "You're talkative today."

"I guess."

"You seem happier lately. Something good happen?"

"Yeah." His expression was expectant. This was my perfect chance. I just had to open my mouth, get the syllables out, and it would be done. Just open my mouth. I took a deep breath. I could just do this quickly, get it all over with. I could do this. "I've been seeing someone from school. A… a girl. We're going out."

"Oh." His tone is hardly even surprised. "What's she like?" The same question I'd asked him.

"She's… amazing. I've never met anyone like her." There are a million other things I want to say, but I can't find the words. He seems to understand anyway. "She makes me happy when I'm around her."

"I'm glad. It's nice to see you happy, Akito."

The food arrived at that moment, but I was too overcome with relief to eat. I felt like a weight had been lifted off my shoulders. I also felt very tired.

-/-/-/-

"Oh? Are you the new transfer student?"

She's one of those young teachers. The kind who tries to be friends with the students, not yet having realized that such a friendship is the last thing most of us want. I'm no exception.

"Yeah," I say, and turn back to my drawing. According to the hackneyed speech she made at the start of class, the assignment is to sketch a self-portrait.

Unable to get the hint, she comes closer so that she is touching my shoulder and her huge eyes are right in my face. I can feel the warmth from her body so close to me. "Ooh, can I see your drawing? Wow, that's really good!"

I continue drawing, adding some shading to my hair.

"I'm Ms. Kuramae. You're Akito Sohma, right?"

I nod.

"Come up to the front of the room, I'll introduce you to the class."

"No thank you," I say.

"Are you sure?" I can tell she really wants to do this, though why is beyond me.

"I'm certain."

She finally releases my shoulder. "Well, just tell me if you change your mind!" She smiles uneasily and retreats behind her desk.

I examine my drawing. The mouth is too thin. The skin is too pale. The hair is so messy – I don't think there's a word for the style. It looks like…

I don't know. Like me.

When the bell goes, I gather up my things and head to my second class. At least the language arts teacher doesn't make the same fuss about my arrival. The time passes uneventfully, consisting of taking notes on a reading about metaphor in mythology. A few students keep looking at me, most of them female. I completely ignore them. Another ring of the bell, and I'm out in the halls again. No homework to work on yet, and the mythology reading is too short and trite to bother trying to study from, so maybe I'll stop by the library.

That is, if I can make it through these halls. The crowd seems even thicker than this morning, if that's possible. Loud, expensively dressed students, walking with overconfident swaggers, bumping into anyone who doesn't move out of their paths. Stereotypes come to life – cocky jocks, giggling blond girls hanging off them, small groups of foreign students huddled close together and commenting on people they see in languages those people don't understand.

Are all high schools like this? The one I went to before this seemed exactly the same. I would be excited for it all to be over, if I had any idea of what would come next for me. An admitted pessimist, I've seen enough evidence to learn by now that things can always get worse.

"Akito!"

Speaking of…

Ms. Kuramae is running towards me – a teacher, running in the halls – smiling and waving. Clearly I didn't assert my desire for her to be as uninvolved in my life as possible clearly enough this morning. She flashes her clichéd grin. "How has your morning been?" She's out of breath by the time she's caught up and begins walking beside me. How far did she run to catch up?

"It was fine."

"Only fine?"

"Good enough."

She gives what she must think is an understanding smile. Are all her expressions variations of smiles? "High school can be a rough time, but I'm sure you'll fit in here if you give it a chance."

Where did she get the idea that I wanted to fit in?

She continues, "Have you seen the cafeteria?"

"No."

"I'll show you! Teenage boys need to eat, and you're probably starving by now." She continues to ramble on about how she wishes she had a metabolism like a teenage boy or something of that sort, and I tune her out. I don't know why I let her lead me to the cafeteria, but when we get there, what I see causes a mix of contradictory emotions to go through me; primarily excitement, nervousness and… happiness.

Seated at one of the many tables is the girl from the restaurant patio. Although I know the chances of seeing her here make this ridiculously unlikely – there are countless high schools in the city, and she looks older than high school age, anyway – something in me erases all rational doubt.

Her sunglasses have been replaced with fashionable glasses with thick white rims, and her dress with a red t-shirt and faded jeans. Her hair is tied up in a ponytail with a lilac ribbon. I want to get closer to her, to make out all the details – the texture of her hair, her facial features, the curves of her body under her clothes.

I suddenly notice the guy sitting beside her. Black shirt, orange hair, stay-away-from-me aura noticeable even from across the room.

Ms. Kuramae must see me staring, because she says, in her usual overenthusiastic manner, "Do you know them? Kyo Sohma and Tohru Honda?"

"I know him."

"Oh, _right!_ You both have the same last name! Are you guys related?"

"Doubt it. It's a common name. We might be distant cousins."

She laughs. "You know so much more about Japanese culture than I do. That's so cool for you. You'll have to teach me some day. All I know about are their fashion trends. Have you ever been over there?"

"No."

I realize that as we've been talking, she's led me to the table. "Kyo, you know Akito?"

He glares at me. "We've met."

Totally oblivious, Ms. Kuramae cheers, "That's great!" Gesturing to the girl, "Akito, this is Tohru. Tohru, Akito. He's new to the school."

"Nice to meet you," I say.

Tohru smiles at me. Unlike with Ms. Kuramae, I actually appreciate the gesture. It doesn't seem fake. In fact, it's… beautiful. "You too, Akito!" It feels so odd to be the recipient of her hospitality; I know I don't deserve it. Even so, it feels good. Like I'm warm. "I hope we can be good friends!"

"I'll leave you guys to talk. Have a good lunch!" As soon as Ms. Kuramae leaves, Kyo stands up, pulling me aside by the fabric of my hoodie.

"Stay away from her," he says quietly, cornering me against a wall.

I could make a smart comment, but I don't need to ask who he means. I glance back at the table, where Tohru is eating a slice of pizza. She doesn't seem to see what's going on, and Kyo and I are definitely out of earshot.

"Why?" I say, knowing the answer probably won't bring me any satisfaction.

"Guys like you should stay out of her life."

He studies my face. He must like what he sees, because the corner of his mouth crinkles upwards and he releases his grip on my hoodie. He walks back to the table with that so-common swagger, the chains on his camouflage pants clanking with each step.

I decide to continue with my original plan, for now, and head off to the library. I'm not stupid enough to spend any more time pissing off a guy who could and would obviously like nothing better than an excuse to beat me up. I think I can infer he doesn't want girls like me in Tohru's life either.

That doesn't mean I'll listen.


	3. III: Good Day

A/N: I would like to thank BitterSweet27, lindajrjt, loritakitochan, and dishrag-chan for their lovely reviews. I should probably explain that this story has no curse in it, and it takes place in Canada, more specifically Alberta. This might be kind of weird, but it's somewhere I actually know about. As a warning, I should mention that this chapter contains homophobia, insensitive remarks, and possibly triggering material. Sorry… I just couldn't think of another way to show characterization and forward the plot that was realistic.

The chapter title comes from a song by The Dresden Dolls.

**Deconstruction  
III: Good Day**

**Akito**

The only other students in the library seem to be there for the computers. Rows of students staring intensely at rows of whirring, clicking machines. The library's only other occupant is the librarian, a middle-aged woman with extremely short hair. Nobody pays me any attention, and I find this calming after my experiences this morning.

I look through the books, taking as much time as possible. It's not like I have anything else to do before my next classes – athletic advancement and chemistry. Chemistry I have no problem with, but the word "athletic" sets off a red flag. Maybe I'll talk to the teacher and see if I can get transferred out. For now, I'd rather not think about it.

I move deeper into the library, away from the new arrivals and towards the old, plain books that have probably not been checked out in years. I run my fingers over their cracked spines as I walk, making trails in the layers of acquired dust. I pick up a book entitled _Chemistry, _but put it back when I realize the yellowed pages are filled with poetry. Not my thing.

A group of teenagers I hadn't noticed before have congregated amongst the back shelves and are talking in hushed voices. With jagged, uneven haircuts, all black clothes, and looks of disinterest, they remind me of Nikki's friends. The way the librarian gives them warning glances whenever she walks past strengthens the resemblance. I briefly entertain the notion of going up and introducing myself to them. Hey guys, what's up? The urge passes, of course.

I decide on a book about photography, not sure why or even if I will bother to read it through. It just feels like since I came here I should get something out of it.

"Student ID card?" says the librarian, in a tone that implies I should have already known to have it out.

"I don't know if I have one. I'm new here."

Her manner doesn't soften. "It will be in the student information booklet they gave you when you arrived."

I have that in my backpack. As I search for it, she taps her fingers on her desk, like I'm wasting her precious time, even though there's no one in line behind me. I manage to find it, making sure to flash my most irritating smile as I hand it to her.

She (grudgingly) runs it through the machine, then hands it back to me along with the photography book. I glance at the card as I walk away. There's a picture of my face on it. The lighting does no good for my pale skin, giving me a greenish tinge. My black hair pretty much covers my eyes, and my expression is very serious. Written beside the picture is the name of the school and my birth date, just over 17 years ago. Beneath that, there's one more line of text.

"AKITO SOHMA, GENDER: F"

F. Like a failing grade.

I put the card deep in one of the hidden pockets of my jeans, closing the zipper all the way and hoping I'll never have to undo it.

The librarian hadn't given me any strange looks that I'd noticed – she was pissed off, but she wasn't weirded out. So either I looked like a girl to her, or she hadn't bothered to check the card. Thinking back, she hadn't looked at it for long, just swiped it through. But there's nothing to ensure that she'll be as careless next time, or that the other librarians won't pay more attention. I decide that from now on, I'll get books from the public library.

-/-/-/-

I kissed her. She pulled away.

She looked over her shoulder like she was worried someone would see us. The halls were empty, obviously. We were supposed to be in class. "Akito, I can't keep doing this." She looked like she was about to cry.

At first I wasn't sure what she meant. Kissing in the halls? Skipping class? Neither sounded like things she'd worry about. She didn't care about rules.

It hit me. Hard. Like someone had punched me in the stomach. She wanted us to break up. "Why?" I said. It was hard to talk, like the air got stuck in my throat.

"Akito, you're wonderful." She wrapped her arms around me, but it wasn't affectionate. It felt like she needed something to hold her up. "My parents… they'd disown me if they found out. They're old fashioned, they don't understand… this."

"Why does it matter what they think? You're always complaining about them, anyway." My voice sounded angry to me. Did I feel angry? More like the floor had been yanked out from under me.

"But they're my_parents. _I live with them, and every time I see them now, it feels like I'm lying." She is crying now. "It scares me so much. And if we stop now… it will be easier. It we… this… if it goes any farther, it will hurt too much. I'm 15. I'm not ready for anything serious like that."

This was worse than being punched. This was being stabbed. Repeatedly. By then I'd caught up with the anger in my voice. What we'd had didn't qualify as serious? Then what the hell did she think it was? A joke? Practice for when she met a guy?

I pushed her away. Black make-up was running down her face.

"Akito-"

"No! I don't want to talk to you, and I don't want you to touch me! I can't even stand to look at you!" I was probably shouting, but the weird thing was I couldn't tell. It was like my ears were blocked, or I was yelling into a vacuum and there was nothing to carry my voice to my ears. But I know that's what I said. I could feel the words from my lips to deep in my chest, as though they'd burned me when I let them out.

Even though I'd quickly turned away from her, Nikki's stricken expression was vivid in my mind's eye. For some reason this pissed me off.

She might have called something after me. I don't know. I was too angry to hear. I know she didn't run after me as I walked out of the school. She probably didn't see that as soon as the door shut behind me, I took off running.

I wasn't athletic, but I ran for a long time, as fast as I could. I was on a paved trail, and most of the snow on the ground had been hammered into thick, white-grey ice sheets by countless footsteps. I would have been cold if I wasn't running so hard. All my skin went kind of numb. The sky was the same colour as the dirty snow. There weren't many other people on the trail, which must have been since it was still school and work hours. The people that were out didn't pay me much attention.

At one point I slid on the ice and slammed into the asphalt. I ripped my jeans, and my knee was bleeding a lot. It was bright, bright red and felt warm. That's all I noticed about it. Then the world tilted and I vomited onto the snow.

When I stood up, I was really shaky, but after a few steps I started running again.

It was getting dark when I finally stopped. I was at the outskirts of the town, and it seemed an anticlimax. The road stopped being paved, and then it merged into grass, which merged into fields. And then those abruptly ended, cleanly cut off by the road. If I walked through the fields, I would no longer be in my hometown. But that didn't mean much. I suddenly realized I hadn't been just running to nowhere in particular, nor had I been looking for the edge of the town. I was looking for the edge of the world.

If I had been there, right at that moment, at the edge of the world, I probably would have jumped off, just for the possibility of landing in another place where everything was different.

I turned around and ran all the way back home. When I got there, That Woman was already asleep, but I put my desk in front of my door so that she couldn't get in if she woke up. I collapsed on my bed. I was shaking uncontrollably. If I hadn't been so tired, I probably wouldn't have fallen asleep. But I was tired, and I was unconscious almost instantly, still in the clothes I'd worn all day, feeling dirty.

-/-/-/-

**Yuki**

Kyo is waiting outside the door to the gymnasium when I get there. As per usual, he looks angry. I try to ignore him and get to class, but he steps in front of my path. "What's up, goth-boy?"

I hate that nickname. If he was just insulting me, I could brush it off, but he's not. The name has more to do with whom I spend my time with than my own personal style.

"Will you move?"

"What gives you the right to tell me what to do?"

That's Kyo logic. I've given up trying to make sense of it. "Fine. What do you want?"

He continues to glare at me. "I want you to call off your friends." My surprise must show, because he says, "Or do they not bother to tell you about what they get up to?"

I truly have no idea what he's talking about, but somehow the way he phrased that prevents me from saying so. "I'll talk to them," I say.

"You better." But his posture relaxes, and he moves out of my way. "And oh," he calls back behind him, "tell your new emo to stay away from Tohru."

"My new _what?_"

"That new kid, the skinny one with the black hair and black clothes. Looks like one of your crowd." And then he's gone, disappeared down the halls.

Nothing ever comes out of a conversation with Kyo that isn't completely nonsensical.

I head down the flight of stairs to the locker room and quickly change into my gym clothes. When I get back to the gym, I'm relieved to see I'm not late. Or at least, other people are taking longer than I am and the Ms. Shiraki doesn't seem to mind. She's talking to a student I've never seen before.

Is this the person Kyo had been ranting about? He – I think they're a boy, although I'm not completely sure. It doesn't really make much of a difference to me – fits the description well. Jet black hair that is neither short nor long, pale and noticeably underweight. Black shirt, black jeans, black hoodie.

Kyo said this person was new. Maybe he'd be joining our class. This strikes me as odd – he doesn't really look like the athletic type.

_Then again_, I remind myself, _neither do you._

**Akito**

"You must be the new student."

"Yes. I am Akito Sohma."

"I'm Ms. Shiraki. So, why did you sign up for athletic advancement?"

I didn't. I am not in the least an athletic person, and I'm sure it shows. "I think I just got put in it."

She nods. "Well, if you have the right attitude, you can get a lot out of this class. It's designed for athletes who are willing to work hard to bring up their level of performance."

The right attitude. Great. I'm guessing that not caring at all about sports is the wrong attitude. I am willing to work hard. Unfortunately, my idea of working hard is a few minutes of slow jogging. Anything past that isn't hard. It's impossible. The only thing I want to get out of this class is a passing grade. And to survive.

She assigns me a locker number and writes down a combination that in all likelihood I'll never look at again. I put it in my pocket with the ID card. Since you didn't know to bring a change of clothes, she says, you can sit on the stage and watch everyone run around.

It's really boring. I take out the photography book within a few minutes of sitting down. The book is more interesting than I thought it would be. A bright red and blue and grey picture of water droplets splashing up as a car runs through a puddle. A teenage couple holding hands reflected in the surface of a very shiny building. A kite flying in a cloudless sky, a bright yellow field of canola in the foreground. Ordinary moments with perfect timing. I wonder if, to a photographer, the world always looks this sharp and vibrant.

I doubt it.

"What book is that?"

I look up, and my eyes meet the startlingly red ones of a boy my own age. There's something familiar about him – after a moment, I place him as one of the black-clad teenagers from the library. He's still wearing a black shirt, but he's exchanged the rest of his outfit for running shoes and a pair of shorts the same colour as his eyes. Despite grey-purple hair with a streak of violet in his long bangs, I wouldn't have thought of him as part of that group just by looking at him, here by himself.

I must be staring, because he points at his ruby eyes. "Contacts. They're naturally grey."

"Why are you talking to me?"

He shrugs, not seeming at all put off by my words. "You looked lonely. I'm sorry, I should have introduced myself. I'm Yuki."

"Akito. It's a book about photography."

"Interesting?"

"Sort of."

He climbs up on the stage and sits down next to me. Too close in my opinion.

"Why aren't you running?" I say.

"It's my turn to rest. Only one person from a group sprints at a time."

As I look around, I see that he's telling the truth. Three quarters of the students are stretching or standing around talking as a few run the circuit at a breakneck pace. Feeling supremely idiotic, I say, "Do you know if we can transfer out of classes?"

He looks thoughtful. "I think you could go to administration about it, but it would probably take a while to sort it all out. Halfway through your first athad class and you already hate it that much?"

"My first what?"

"Athad – athletic advancement."

"Oh. It's not really my kind of class."

"So what is?"

Actually? I realize I have no idea, so I say, "Other stuff."

"It's not usually like this, you know – the sprinting. Usually it's more laid back, like games and stuff."

"Why do you care whether I stay in this class or not?"

He shrugs again. "I don't know, I just think you should give it a chance."

I look away from him and back at the sprinters. I've decided he annoys me.

His turn comes to run again and he jumps down from the stage. He doesn't come back to talk after that.

-/-/-/-

The first few days after we'd broken up (read: she dumped me with no warning) Nikki completely avoided me. If she saw me in the halls, she'd go quiet and stare at the ground, then take the quickest path out of sight. I couldn't blame her for that, after the way I'd reacted. I honestly don't know if I was more hurt by her avoidance than I would have been if she acted differently. Just being in the same building with her, or the same world, knowing who she'd been to me and that things were never going to be the same anymore felt like too much to handle. A part of me was gone.

When she worked up the courage to start talking to me again, it was my turn to brush her off. We'd have pointless, Hi, how are you? conversations when we saw each other. We (or at least, I) would lie, Fine. And then we'd go our separate ways.

Slowly, things got better. Sort of. After a few weeks, I knew that I had once lived without her in my life, and I could go back to doing that. I'd be okay, right?

I was in my room reading when That Woman started pounding on the door. The whole room seemed to shake.

"Akito! Open up!"

I kept quiet, even trying to slow my breathing down. When I got scared, even before I realized it, I tended to start hyperventilating. I always felt pathetic about the fact that I had barely any control over it.

She continued to slam on the door, but my desk held in place. She kept on shouting things, and I did my best not to hear them.

"Open up _NOW_, or you're never getting out!" Suddenly the pounding stopped.

I wished that Hatori were around, to take me out of the house. His high school was having some sort of break for the week, and he was using the time to go out of town and see different universities that were supposed to be good for studying medicine.

The pounding didn't resume. Gradually, my breathing became effortless again.

A few hours passed. I suddenly couldn't see the words I was trying to read. How did it get dark so fast? As I stood up to turn on the light, I almost fell over as a rush of dizziness hit me. I'd skipped breakfast that day, and I almost never ate lunch. And since I'd locked myself in my room the second I got home…

I hadn't eaten since breakfast yesterday.

It was really no reason to panic. I'd gone way longer before. My stomach didn't even hurt, not badly anyway. Since I hadn't eaten breakfast, my metabolism hadn't fully started up, and I knew that as soon as I got a taste of anything, my body would suddenly realize how hungry I was. I would hurt, and I would binge on everything around me even if it was food I usually hated, and then I would only end up making myself sick and feeling disgusting.

So I tried to go to sleep. But now I couldn't stop thinking about food. I'd be kind of half asleep, in between thoughts and dreams, and I'd start to imagine I was eating and then I'd realize I wasn't and then I'd jolt to being completely awake again. Since I had no sense of time in that state, I don't know what time it was when I finally decided to just give in and go to the kitchen. I'd just eat one bowl of cereal, and clean everything up perfectly so That Woman had no idea. Of course, I wouldn't stop at one bowl. But that's what I told myself I would do, and if I hadn't managed to convince myself on some level that it was true, I never would have gotten up to leave the room.

I moved the desk slowly, careful not to make a sound. If I woke her up, I was screwed. I turned the doorknob and pulled…

And nothing happened. Something was resisting me, pulling back on the door so it didn't move. I gave a hard yank, and the door budged maybe a couple centimeters, but then snapped right back.

By now I was freaked out. Was she actually going to just leave me in here? Would I actually starve to death? If I had to, I could break my window, jump down onto the lawn and go…

Where? I don't think I could even have survived the fall, and the glass would cut me all over and I'd be bleeding and by bones would be broken and and and and -

I hadn't realized, but I was still pulling on the door. I wasn't even being quiet anymore; I was slamming it back and forth, almost ripping it from its hinges.

And then it opened. That Woman stood right in front of me, holding one end of a piece of rope in her hands. The other end was tied to the doorknob of the washroom, across from my own room. That's how she'd locked me in. She'd tied the doorknobs together.

"Now we're going to talk," she says. I walk past her into the kitchen and run a glass of water from the tap, listening to the sounds the water made as it traveled through the pipes. "Akito, I've been hearing some things about you from the other parents. I need you to tell me they're not true."

Her referring to herself as a parent was a joke and a half. Even though she was my mother, it wasn't like she did any actual parenting. She was just a crazy person who happened to live in the same house as I did. I switched the tap off and brought the glass to my lips. The water was cold and carried the faint, familiar taste of the chemicals used to purify it.

"Akito!" she said sharply.

"What?"

"They say you've been associating with that delinquent lesbian crowd. Tell me it isn't true." She says the words like they taste bad to her. The same tone as she'd use if she was telling me, "They say you've been skipping school to set fire to the elderly." I wondered where she'd gotten her 'information' from. It wasn't even accurate. Nikki said she was bisexual, and I think a few other people were too – it was hard to tell who was joking and who wasn't, but it didn't really seem that important to us to put ourselves in those terms. In any case, calling us the "delinquent lesbian crowd" was retarded.

"Akito. _Tell me it isn't true!"_

"Why does it matter to you?" I set my empty glass down hard on the counter. "It's not like you care about anything else in my life!"

She picked something up off the uncleared table and threw it at me. I ducked just milliseconds before it hit the wall behind me and exploded into tiny fragments. It had been a plate. I reminded myself to be careful on my way out not to step on the shards all over the floor. "I want you to stop seeing these friends of yours. People are going to start making assumptions about you." Shows how little she knew about my life. People already made assumptions, and had been doing so for years. "Do you want people to think that you're like that?"

Like that. Other. What a stupid way to classify people. Two categories. _Either you're Like Us or Like That._

"And what if they do?" I challenge.

She slapped me, and this time she didn't miss. My cheek stung like it was on fire, and the sound and feeling of the hit echoed in my head. "Your father would be so ashamed of you," she said. Her voice was barely more than a whisper.

I pushed her away from me with all my strength. She crashed down to the floor, cursing. She yelled after me as I ran to the door. I stepped half-into my shoes, and was out, running blindly through the dim glow emanating from the streetlights, my shoes nearly falling off. When I felt like I was far away, I stopped. I fell onto a bench, fixed my runners, and considered my situation.

I couldn't go back there. But where else could I go? The sun would be up soon, and then I'd just be some girl in the park, dressed in an oversized shirt and boxers and running shoes. I wasn't even wearing a bra. I was just some stupid fourteen-year-old runaway who hadn't even planned it out enough to change into appropriate, non-conspicuous day clothes. And if I stayed out here, she was going to find me, or they'd send me back to her. Even Hatori's parents would agree that I should me with my mother. There was only one other place I could even consider going.

And that's how I ended up standing outside in my pajamas at four A.M., ringing the doorbell to my ex-girlfriend's house.

-/-/-/-

At least chemistry class is straightforward. We take notes the entire time, and no one even tries to talk to me. Yuki is there too, but he's across the room and completely mesmerized by the music coming out of his headphones – not earbuds, but actual big, old-fashioned headphones – and doesn't even look at me. After school, I take the bus back to my apartment and give Hatori a call. We don't talk long, but I let him know things are fine, just because he worries too much about me. I listen to the radio for half an hour before walking to work. All in all, the day has been okay so far. It will be nice to get back into the routine of school. I don't know why it brought back so many memories I had been working on repressing, but I'm hoping that will stop. Athletic advancement and annoying art teachers aside, I seem to have pretty good classes.

Things aren't very busy at the mall, at least not relative to the other days I've worked here. That makes sense, considering it's a school day. I see quite a few people I recognize, although no one I talked to, which makes sense considering I really only talked to maybe three people excluding teachers. At the bubble tea place, there's quite a bit of time between customers. I don't talk with my coworkers except to forward orders or help them with the machines, but that's normal. They talk to each other about school and their social lives, but I don't join in, except to glare at Sean or Shane or whatever the long-haired guy's name is when he refers to one of his classmates as a fag. He looks embarrassed and apologizes. I notice him correcting himself mid-word when he starts to make similar remarks. Ga- la- lame. Dy – ork – dork.

"Hey. Can we please get two mango bubble teas?" says a pleasantly aloof male voice that I would expect to belong to a hippie. I turn to see the customer. He's a couple years older than me, with green eyes behind blue square-framed glasses, light blond hair down to his shoulders, and a goatee the same shade. His clothing is an odd mix of very expensive and made-it-myself; a pink dress shirt over a white t-shirt that he seems to have drawn a large tic-tac-toe board and played a game on in permanent marker. A shell necklace completes the look.

Since there are all kinds of people dressed far more oddly at the mall, I probably would have forgotten him if I hadn't looked down to see the girl standing beside him. More specifically, holding hands with him.

"Tohru…" I say. I don't know what I was intending to say after that, or if I even intended to say it out loud, so I trail off.

"Oh! Hi, Akito!" she says. "Akito, this is my friend Daniel." Friend? That's a good sign, right? Is it normal for people who are just friends to hold hands?

"How's it going, man?" says Daniel.

"Okay," I say as he starts shaking my hand.

"Only okay?" He looks concerned.

"I'm well," I add, breaking off the handshake that he seems to intend to go on forever. I would probably say something rude to him if Tohru weren't right there.

"Do you want to come hang out with us when you're done work?" says Tohru.

Really? Of course I do. I hardly know her, but I want to know more. "Sure," I say. "I'm actually finished in a few minutes."

"We'll just be over at that table," says Daniel, pointing to an empty one nearby. Tohru and him thank me as I hand them their bubble teas, and they walk over there, still holding hands.

"What was that about?" asks the girl who looks too young to work here.

"What?" I say.

She smiles conspiratorially. "Your shift doesn't end for over an hour and a half."

"I've been working here for a week yesterday, and we get a fifteen minute break each day. Since I've always worked through my breaks, I've got one hour and 45 minutes of break time counting today's that I haven't used. So I'm using it now."

She laughs. "That's clever, but I doubt the manager is going to accept that logic."

"Then you don't have to tell her. It's not like she comes and checks on us, and besides, it's not busy enough now that we require three people."

"Okay, but if she asks I'm not going to lie for you."

"You won't have to – I doubt she'll chose today to come check, after never doing so previously."

"She must be special to you. That girl, not the manager."

"It's really none of your business."

"Okay, point taken. Have fun on your date!"

I decide not to respond to that.

As I join Tohru at the table, I notice Daniel isn't there anymore. "He went to get food," says Tohru when I ask. "He didn't want to leave me here, but I managed to convince him I can handle myself for a few minutes. And you're here too now, so I'm not alone, am I?" She smiles, and I feel my face start to go red. All the white noise and excitement around us fades out, and all I am aware of is us.

"He seems really protective of you."

"Yeah, he's like that. He's actually really protective of everyone, but me especially. I don't think it's even because of the vision thing, just that I'm the youngest and he thinks he has to protect me."

The youngest? She can't mean siblings – she's Japanese and he's Caucasian. Unless they're adopted. And what does she mean by vision thing? She wears glasses, but that's not a big deal. "What do you mean?" I ask. That seems like the safest thing to say. My heart is beating really fast. This is the first real conversation we've had.

"In our friend group. Except for Kyo, all my friends have graduated, and I don't really see Kyo outside of school." She suddenly looks a bit sad, but she brightens quickly. "Or did you mean what I meant by vision thing?"

"Both, kind of," I admit.

"I'm blind."

This throws me, because she's obviously looking at me. I notice for the first time that her eyes flick back and forth a lot, but still, I can tell she's _seeing_me. Why would she wear glasses if they didn't do her any good?

"Oh, sorry. I should explain that I meant legally, not completely."

"Oh."

"Aren't you going to ask me what it's like?"

"I wasn't sure if I should. You probably get people asking annoying questions all the time."

"Sometimes. But as long as it's not 'how many fingers am I holding up', I don't usually mind."

"Okay. Um… how far can you see?"

"Pretty far. Things just get blurry quickly. Like, I can walk home fine. Daniel insists on leading me around in here since it's so busy, but I could probably do it myself if I had to – don't tell him I said that."

That was why they were holding hands. And that explained the dog in the restaurant. How had I not put these things together?

"What do I look like to you?" I don't know why I say this.

"Hmm." She leans in closer. I'm all too aware of how close she is now. If I just moved my face forward a bit, I could kiss her. My face goes redder, and I hope she doesn't notice. "I can see you really well from here. Perfectly, I think, although I don't know what perfect seeing is. This is perfect for me." She sits back down. "From here, I can tell that you have dark hair. And you're wearing black, and you have really pretty eyes."

I laugh. I can't help it. "Your eyesight must be really bad." It's the stupidest thing possible I could have said. I seem to say a lot of brain-dead things when she's around. This is not a good pattern. She should be offended, but she laughs.

"No, really! You do. Sorry, was that rude of me to say?"

"No, of course not, why would it be rude?"

"I just met you, and I didn't mean to say anything out of line."

"I'm just not used to people saying stuff like that to me."

"You two seem to be getting on well," says Daniel, sitting down on either side of us and setting down a tray of Chinese food. I don't know whether to be grateful or annoyed by his arrival, but as we start talking, I realize I don't really mind him. This surprises me.


	4. IV: Put It Out for Good

A/N: Many thanks to Unregistered Authoress, BitterSweet27, StrawberryAkito, loritakitochan, and lindajrjt for their reviews. They really brighten my day. This fic is going to be longer than initially planned, so there are a few more OCs, but also lots of manga characters introduced in this chapter.

Chapter title comes from an Amy Ray song. I am not entirely sure on the grammar rules regarding capitalization of song titles, but that's how my computer shows the title so I suppose that's how it's intended to look.

**Deconstruction  
IV: Put It Out for Good**

**Akito**

-/-/-/-

After Tohru and Daniel finish eating, we head over to the music store. Techno blasts over the speakers, dominating my senses. I start looking through the CDs, but don't know where to start. I'm not looking for anything in particular, and the selection is pretty sparse. Pop, rap, slow stuff, wannabe angry guys. I decide to stop trying to actually look for anything and just stick as close as I can to Tohru without seeming like a creep.

Nearby, a tall, slim person with long red hair and chunky black-framed glasses is talking to a Beatle-haired store employee flipping through CD cases. At first the conversation is barely audible over the electronic pulsing, but seems to involve a lot of frantic gesturing on the redhead's part, sending the dozens of panchromatic bracelets covering his or her (I can't tell) arms from the wrists to the sleeves of a black t-shirt clattering against each other. As the customer's voice becomes louder and higher pitched with anxiety, I begin to make out words.

"You really shouldn't have to do this, you have better things to do with your valuable time-"

"I don't mind. It's my job, after all."

"But I'm sure you have more important customers than me!"

The employee looks hard at the shelf for a moment, like he's forgotten how to read the letters on the labels. "It doesn't look like we have them here. I'm sorry, miss."

"Oh my gosh, I've wasted your time for nothing! I'm sorry, I should have known better!"

A woman with spiked bleached-blond hair and the same style of glasses puts a comforting hand on the redhead's shoulder. "Don't worry about it, Ritsu. We can go look for it over at Flamingo's." She's tall as well, but with a more curved build – not really overweight, but not an androgynous stretched-out person like her friend. She's dressed like a surfer, which is odd considering that even if there was a beach anywhere nearby, it would be frozen over.

"I'm sorry," says her friend again, looking ready to cry. "You shouldn't have to go to so much trouble for me. Either of you." The two friends embrace. "Thank you. I'm sorry."

"I told you, don't worry so much," says the blond softly as the store clerk sneaks away. Suddenly, she looks directly up at us and her smile widens. "Hey, you made it!"

"'Course we did," says Daniel, joining in the hug.

After the three of them break apart from each other, Daniel says, "Caylee, Ritsu, this is Akito, one of Tohru's friends from school."

"Nice to meet you," says Caylee, shaking my hand. She laughs, clearly amused by her own formality.

"H-hi," says Ritsu. "Um, sorry I got so emotional in front of you… you didn't need to see that… it was probably uncomfortable…"

"It's fine," I say, undecided on whether he (I'm still not if Ritsu is a 'he' but something about him seems male, and I need a word to think of him as) annoys me or not. His black t-shirt has a pattern of pink and silver stars on it, and his black jeans are so oversized they look like a skirt, held up by a pink-and-green studded belt. It shouldn't be hard to make a snap judgment about him.

For some reason it is.

They talk for a while – Tohru, Daniel, Ritsu and Caylee. It all has a just-like-old-times feel to it. Their old times, not mine. Teachers I've never had, bands I've never heard of, places I've never been. They try to include me in the conversation, but I have nothing to add. I hope this isn't as painfully obvious to them as it is to me.

Caylee ends up buying the loud techno CD, and Tohru gets something from the pop section by some man I've never heard of. It's getting late and shops have started to close themselves off with big metal grilles.

Daniel offers to walk Tohru home, and I mentally slap myself for not remembering before him.

Alone in the dark of my apartment, the movement of blood in my ears echoes back at me from against my pillow and fills my head with static.

-/-/-/-

**Kyo**

I look over the edge and think about going through with it. I don't consider it, I think about it. There's a difference.

I hear something. I realize it's music. My earbuds are in. I remove them and check the screen of my mp3 player. Almost full blast, but I'd barely heard it. Everything sounds distant lately. I think this has only been happening lately, but looking back I can't think of a specific starting point, so maybe not. Maybe it's been going on a long time.

I unplug. I hear fast cars and cold wind. Headlights and traffic lights illuminate the pavement so far below me. Distant.

I could be so close to it all. I could be moving so fast, hit so hard. It could be the most fucking intense thing ever, just for one moment. But I won't do it.

I don't want to go the same way as her. And I don't want to give them the satisfaction of thinking _they _did this to me – I don't give in like that.

And mostly, I don't want to do anything to hurt Tohru.

Thinking about it calms me down, but I shake afterwards.

I used to walk on this railing, when I was younger. It was so ridiculously stupid that sometimes I think maybe I just imagined it. But I'm pretty sure I didn't. I was up there a long time. At least, that's what it felt like. Any amount of time would feel like long standing up there.

Inside the apartment, something clicks. I don't consciously hear it, but my body reacts with an instinctive cringe. My dad must be home. I go back inside to lock myself in my room.

-/-/-/-

**Akito**

"So, um… are we going to talk about this?"

I tried not to see her reflection on the screen in front of me as I checked my inbox. Nothing new. I clicked refresh.

"Fine, then," she said. "Let's talk about something completely different. Let's talk about anything."

Still nothing. Refresh. Refresh.

"Did you see that movie, with the robots in it?"

Re fresh. Reef resh.

"It's good. You should see it. We could go together, I wouldn't mind watching it again."

Refreshments. The refreshing taste of.

Black screen. Nikki yanked my chair until I was facing her. She held the plug to the computer in her hand.

"Just fucking talk to me!" she whispered. She was about to cry and make her smudged make-up even worse. She'd slept with it on and hadn't bothered to wipe it off this morning, much to the chagrin of her parents. She looked like some sort of animal with spots around its eyes, or a member of some extinct offshoot of the goth subculture.

"I don't know what you want me to say," I said.

"Just tell me what you want from me! I _want _you to be happy, but you won't tell me how! Just because of my parents doesn't mean we can't still be friends."

"That's just it. Being friends obviously doesn't mean the same thing to you as it does to me."

"I didn't ask for this to happen! In fact, I wish it hadn't, 'cause that would have been better for everyone."

"I would never have done to you what you did to me." I hated how the words came out, so self-righteous. I didn't even know if they were true. I'd said horrible things to her, after we broke up. I had wanted to _hurt _her, and I had.

"I know," she said, even though she shouldn't have. She was crying now, sitting on her parents' bed, hugging her knees and hiding her face. She looked so small.

I didn't know how to apologize, so I held her. I can't believe she let me.

-/-/-/-

Nikki made her parents out to be everything that was bad about the old country. I'm not quite sure what old country this was, but they were something European and heavily accented. Her father worked for the city, which in his case meant doing some kind of difficult, dangerous manual labor (Nikki rolled her eyes as he showed me the scars on his hands from being injured by street-cleaning machinery) rather than filling out paperwork like it does for most people. From what I could tell, Nikki's mom ran errands, visited Nikki's many relatives, and did housework all day.

Since Nikki wasn't a quiet person, I get the feeling her mother overheard a lot of our conversations and knew more about her daughter than she let on.

No one asked me why I had been kicked out of my house. I got to borrow some of Nikki's clothes for the first day, which were too short on me, and then her father took me to the mall and insisted on buying me new ones, accepting without question that I couldn't go back to get any. I picked out the cheapest ones I could find.

I stayed at Nikki's house until Hatori came to get me. He was furious with my mother and refused to let me go back to where I'd lived all my life. I was shuffled around between relatives' houses after that.

In the time I was at her house, Nikki began smiling and laughing around me a lot again, although she was always careful never to let us touch in case anything happened. It was like there was a layer of oil keeping two elements from reacting.

It was better than nothing, I guess.

Before I left, she said to me, "Now do you see what I meant about them? They've been here since I was, like, a little kid, and they're still total F.O.B.s." F.O.B.s. Fresh Off the Boats. "People like them just can't understand."

I tried to act like I understood what she meant.

-/-/-/-

I don't remember what I dreamed last night, but I wake up with a bad taste in my mouth.

-/-/-/-

**Yuki**

I find Haru sitting by himself in the courtyard.

"Still that computer thing?" I ask.

He looks up from the book he's reading – something about vampires. "What else?" he says. In the past, his voice and general mannerisms have caused teachers to worry that he doesn't get enough sleep or accuse him of being on drugs. He takes calm to a whole new level.

Well, except in the rare instances when something gets to him. When we were in grade eight, he was almost expelled for breaking another guy's nose. The only reason he wasn't was because the other guy was a ninth grader, and a big one at that. Six-foot-tall, one-eighty pounds, star of all the sports teams, beaten up by the skinny, quiet Japanese guy.

But I was there when it happened, and if Haru hadn't been pulled away by three gym teachers, I really can't say what would have happened to the other guy except that it would have been a lot more serious than a broken nose.

Haru still refused to tell anyone what this person did that got him so upset, but I can make a few guesses.

"Boo!"

I can't help but start at the sudden noise in my ear. Momiji laughs. "Yuki, you jumped!"

"Hi, Momiji," says Haru, as Momiji takes a seat between us and opens his lunch box, which as usual is filled mostly with candy as brightly coloured as his clothing.

"Momiji, are the others almost done?" I say.

"Yup, they're all finished for today. But they walk slow so I got here first!"

Momiji is one of those people who still runs in the hall. Teachers don't tell him off, either because he would probably cry or because they like him too much to be angry with him. Just about everyone likes Momiji.

A few minutes later, Kureno and Rin join us. They're still laughing about something.

"Kureno, Kureno! I scared Yuki!" says Momiji, running up to hug him. When Kureno is in a good mood like now, he looks like a grown-up version of Momiji, despite there being only a one year age difference between them. They both have messy blond hair and the same way of smiling, although their personal styles are almost polar opposites. Kureno in his black cloak, tie and safety-pin-adorned dress shirt and ripped jeans, Momiji in his multicoloured neon, jewelry and boots that, despite the few inches they add to his height, still leave him short.

"I trust it went well?" I say.

Rin grins. "It went great. Since Britt's in the yearbook design class, we were able to get in through her account. Then we made a copy of it so we have our own."

"I adjusted the settings so it's listed as a moderator account but won't show up unless the teachers are specifically looking for it," says Kureno.

"And we won't give them any reason to do that," says Rin. "At least, not yet. By the time they realize what we've done, we'll be out of here."

"That's great," says Haru, tonelessly as always, looking directly at Rin but not seeming to see her. Despite being Haru's best friend, sometimes I can't read his expressions at all.

"I don't know how you managed to figure all this stuff out," I say to Kureno, shaking my head.

"I had time on my hands."

"Obviously."

"It's really not that complicated, though, once you figure out how the system works. It's all codes, like the student ID numbers – Rin figured those out."

"I thought they were just random," says Haru.

"That's what it's supposed to look like," says Rin, "but each digit actually means something, and you can figure out someone's number based on that. The first one is for what school we go to, so ours all start with four."

"Mine starts with a two," says Momiji.

"That's because you transferred here," says Kureno.

Rin continues. "The next two are for what year you were born. Then it's the number for homeroom, then codes for any special needs or talents. Then age relative to others in your homeroom – zero-one for the oldest student, then zero-two, etcetera. Last is gender – one for guys, zero for girls."

"Why would they bother making those up?" says Momiji.

"It probably makes it easier to decide who goes in what class," I say.

"Exactly," says Rin. "They don't even have to look at the names of the kids or even check their files, just sort out the numbers so there's a balance of males and females and so the disabled kids go to teachers who know how to work with them."

"That's convenient, I guess," I say. "Also kind of impersonal."

"I agree. It's creepy," says Haru. "Turning us all into numbers."

"I guess it's always going to happen eventually," says Kureno. He's not smiling anymore. He never smiles for long.

We're quiet for a while. Momiji goes to say hi to some other friends of his. After Kureno leaves to get something from the cafeteria, Rin rolls her eyes and says, "Emo. We need to get him a girlfriend."

"So why don't you go out with him?" I say.

She and Haru both look at me like I'm crazy. "He's my friend," says Rin.

"It's way too awkward to date your friends," agrees Haru.

"Then who are you supposed to date? Strangers?" I say.

"Yeah, sometimes," says Haru. "Like friends of friends and people who go to other schools."

"You really are clueless, Yuki," says Rin.

"And there's the internet," adds Haru.

"You're both going to be horribly murdered by psychopathic stalkers."

Kyo walks past, taking a moment to glare at us.

"What was that about?" says Rin.

"I have no idea," I answer truthfully.

-/-/-/-

**Hatori**

My weekly email from Kana came today. It was a short one this time.

She's getting married. She mailed me an invitation.

I've met her fiancée before, a few times. Most of what I know about him comes from what Kana's wrote me. I can feel her joy through the words she writes about him. He makes her so happy.

That's what's important.

Kana made me happy, once. She still does, but it's not the same.

When I was close to her, I felt like I was going to explode, but in a good way.

I could never get close enough.

I can never get far enough.

I want to let her go.

-/-/-/-

**Haru**

After school lets out, I find Kyo out on the hill by the church where the smokers hang out as they wait for the bus. Actually, they don't really hang out. At least not all together. They just stand there, in a crowd but by themselves at the same time. No talking between them, except sometimes insults. Fag and fatass and bitch.

Kyo doesn't say anything. He doesn't even look at anyone. Not even me.

"What happened between us?" I say.

"What do you mean?" Still not looking at me. It smells bad here, and weird. Not just tobacco, or common drugs. Some people are smoking things that aren't meant to be smoked. Kyo isn't smoking anything, just standing there with his hands in his pockets, looking irritated as always.

"Why aren't we friends anymore?" I say.

"You started hanging out with jerks."

"Is this about Yuki again?"

Kyo ignores me.

"So, was Tohru not here today?"

"Why do you care?"

"I was just wondering. You usually walk her home."

"She had an eye appointment. She left early."

"Darren's having a party. Do you want me to get you an invite?"

"Where did that come from?"

"I'm just asking."

Kyo sighs. "When is it?"

"Next week."

"Do what you want."

We both look up at the sound of shattering glass. A girl with blue dreadlocks has thrown a bottle into the street, causing cheers to erupt from the crowd of students waiting for busses or traffic lights. Someone rolls another bottle into the path of oncoming traffic. There is a popping noise as a car drives over it, sending tiny fragments of glass raining down on the asphalt.

"I've got to go," says Kyo, turning his back to me and starting to walk away. I guess he'd rather miss the bus than talk to me.

-/-/-/-

**Akito**

As much as it pains me to admit it, my mother wasn't always like this.

When my father was alive, she seemed like a completely different person. Not that young children are the best judges of character, but she seemed… happy. I remember her laughing and smiling and taking me places.

As my father's illness progressed, I began to see her as two separate entities. It was the only way I'd be able to stand her. There was the 'nice' (I use the term relatively) version of her. The one who could talk to me without crying or yelling or hitting me, although she was often cold to me without explanation.

And then there was That Woman. That Woman had wild jealous eyes, unwashed hair, a voice that cut like needles. That Woman wouldn't let me see my father, told me the more time I spent around him the more ill he would become. Even at my young age, I knew this didn't make sense. This didn't stop me from feeling like a monster every time I snuck out to visit him in the hospital.

After his death, she was That Woman full time.

-/-/-/-

It's been a few days, and I think Ms. Kuramae has almost given up trying to socialize me.

Almost.

"So Akito, how are you finding the school?" she says, inspecting my artwork – a lackluster pen and ink still life of the plant I was assigned to draw – and nodding appreciatively for no discernible reason.

"I'm doing well."

"I'm glad to hear that." Rather than being dissuaded by my answer, she pulls up a chair next to me, setting her elbow on my desk and leaning against her hand, much too close to me. I slide my chair away from her, trying to be subtle about it. I know to show some respect to authority figures, even stupid ones. "Have you kept in touch with your friends from your old school?"

I shrug.

"Moving is hard," she continues. "Did you get along with Tohru and Kyo?"

"I was at the mall with Tohru a few days ago." It's true, although I avoid any more detail because I'm not sure of much more myself. I haven't really talked to her since then, just hellos in the hallways. She's in none of my classes, and I have no idea how to start a conversation with her. What could we have to talk about?

I know I'm attracted to her. It's not hard to figure out. She's beautiful. She's everything I'm not. But it's just a superficial thing, I mean, I hardly know her, nothing I feel for her can mean much.

But what do I want it to mean?

She's not the type of person I usually fall for. Not in the least. So I'm expecting my feelings for her to evaporate soon. She's too nice – it will end up annoying me. She actually pays attention to me. She's… attainable.

Except not.

"That's great!" says Ms. Kuramae, smile widening. After a pause she adds, more seriously, "Give Kyo a chance, too. I think he'd appreciate it."

Shows how well she knows her students. Kyo would be thrilled if I fell down an uncovered manhole while crossing the street.

During lunch break, I decide to walk around the outside area rather than stop into the cafeteria. Clumps of students wait for DON'T WALK signs to change while cars speed past. Shallow puddles reflect traffic lights and the bright grey sky.

I walk for maybe ten minutes, taking the sidewalks away from the school before I turn back. As I'm standing under a traffic light, a bit off from the crowd, I hear my name.

"Hey, Akito." I turn to see Yuki standing with a group dressed similarly to his friends from the library – maybe they're the same people, maybe only some of them are, I'm not sure. A girl with extremely long black hair, a tall blond boy, a white-haired but young guy with a lot of piercings, a red-haired girl with the same type of glasses Ritsu and Caylee had, and a petit blond boy wearing a lot of eyeliner.

The black-haired girl steps towards me and looks me over like she's appraising a piece of pottery. "So," she says, "you're the one Yuki's been telling us about."

"You talk about me?"

"Only good things," says Yuki, seemingly oblivious to my accusatory tone.

"It's true, you know." She checks the black polish on her fingernails, then looks me directly in the eyes. "Yuki's ridiculously nice. He'd never say anything bad about anyone."

I'm not sure whether I've just been insulted, so I don't say anything. Yet. If she offends me again, she'll regret it.

Her mouth is a hard line, betraying no emotion – just like I've grown up learning to make mine. Only hers is beautiful. It's perfect.

She narrows her eyes. "Would you?"

It takes me a second to realize what she's talking about. Would I say anything bad about anyone. "Yes," I say, not even needing to think about it. "If they deserved it."

"So would I," she says. Then she smiles. Some of the tension between us disperses. Not all of it. "I'm Rin. You've already met Yuki." She points to the white-haired boy. "That's Haru." The tall blond. "Kureno." The girl with the glasses. "Britt." Eyeliner boy. "Jazzy."

The cold air fills with 'hi's and 'nice to meet you's and I respond appropriately.

"It's piss cold out here," says Jazzy. His voice is surprisingly masculine.

"Yeah, let's go in," says Yuki. The WALK sign is on and I wonder how long it's been like that.

Without warning, Rin links her arm in mine. I walk with her, hoping she didn't notice I flinched when she touched me.

Inside, Haru, Rin, Kureno, Jazzy and I sit down while Yuki goes to buy food and Britt leaves to talk with a teacher about something.

"So, why did you transfer here, Akito?" says Haru.

I think for a moment, realize I'm taking too long to answer. "I moved."

"Where from?" says… what's his name, Kureno. It's the first thing he's said since I've met him. Despite his height and appearance, he's not very noticeable.

"Up north."

"Family reasons?"

"If that included getting away from them, then yes." As soon as the words are out of my mouth, I regret saying them. Way to make everyone uncomfortable. Although Yuki irritates me, I don't mind his friends so far.

Instead of the expected awkward silence, I get nods. "So you live on your own?" says Haru.

"Yes."

"I wish I could do that." Rin sighs and examines a rip in one of her black-and-white-striped knee socks. "I'm with grandparents until I have a decent income. Or until they throw me out."

"That happened to me," says Jazzy. "The parentals kicked me out and the grandparentals wouldn't take me, so I'm living with my sister and her boyfriend." He laughs, although I can't see anything funny about the situation. "Who are pretty damn cool, so it's all good how it turned out."

"Hey, Kureno," says Rin. "You and Haru are the only one's here who actually live with their parents."

"I'll probably move out after high school." Kureno seems far away – well, farther away than he's been this whole conversation. "For school."

Rin rolls her eyes. "You and your aspirations. What will it be, lawyer or accountant?"

"I don't know yet. Probably neither, but it's possible."

"Where are you going to university?" I say.

"I don't know yet."

Rin glares at him. "If you're going to join the world of the highly educated, you'd better learn to be more decisive."

"Ooh, now she's pissed," says Jazzy.

"I'm just saying, he's the only one of us that actually has a future, but it's going to pass him by at this rate."

"Hey, I have a future," objects Jazzy. "I'ma be a fashion designer. Or a poet, or singer or something."

"And don't forget about Akito," says Haru.

The way Rin looks at me makes it clear she _had _forgotten me. "Okay then." She smiles at me discomfortingly. "Akito, got any dreams?"

"There's a recurring one. I'm in a basement full of antique bathtubs. Then the floor turns into grains of rice and I sink into it like quicksand."

Silence. Then laughter.

Jazzy says, "That's fucking awesome." He grins, exposing very white, very pointed teeth.

"I like you," decides Rin. "You're interesting."

"I can't believe it's almost over," says Haru. He pauses. "High school, I mean."

"Yeah," says Rin. We're quiet again.

Yuki comes back at this point, bearing pizza. Kureno and Haru take slices. Jazzy, Rin and I decline. "What were you guys talking about? You all seem depressed." Yuki eyes us with concern.

"The future," says Haru.

"Like science-fiction?"

"Sort of. Us."

"Speaking of, does anyone have any thoughts regarding the major event of the immediate future?" says Kureno.

"Darren's party," says Rin.

Jazzy flashes a bright vampiric smile "It's gonna be a fuckin' parade of my exes."

Rin turns to me. "I'll get you an invite."

"I don't do parties."

"It will be fun. Just try it."

For reasons beyond my comprehension, I agree to think about it.

-/-/-/-

I don't actually hate athletic advancement like I expected to. I've only been in it a few days, but so far it's been surprisingly tolerable. There's something oddly rewarding about feeling like I'm about to die and then… not.

I can feel my heart beat after I've been running a while. And by a while, I mean maybe 30 seconds. I can hear the steady bass thump in my ears. It's kind of nice. I could do without the sweat, though. And the way I breathe, like I'm having some sort of attack. I'm nowhere close to the physical condition of my classmates, but the school wouldn't let me switch out. I guess that's what happens when one transfers in the middle of the semester.

I'm always hungry afterwards, whether that's for better or for worse. I've been eating breakfast these last few days, because I don't have even the small bit of endurance I have now if I don't. But food costs money, and I still feel sick after eating it. Now I just feel sick if I don't eat it as well.

I wear my gym shorts under my jeans. I change my shirt in a stall in the guy's washroom, making sure to go in a few minutes after the late bell has gone so that no one else is in there. I figure that since Ms. Kuramae assumes I'm male, it's safest to just go with it in case someone sees me.

As tolerable as athletic advancement may be, that doesn't mean I have too many qualms about skipping it.

I was walking down the gym hallway when I heard the sound. It was a kind of whimpering – my first thought was that it was a kitten or something, although I couldn't see why one would be in the school. I couldn't tell where it was coming from, but it seemed to be close by.

I did a double take as I walked by the vending machine. Slumped against the side of the humming, blue-light-emitting unit was a girl, out of view from the way I'd come from, black clothes camouflaged against the black-painted metal. Red hair and glasses.

"Britt, right?"

She nodded, looked up at me and then away.

"Are you all right?" I am absolutely horrible in these situations.

She stood up straight, taking off her glasses and wiping them on her shirt. "I'm just angry." She wasn't crying. At least, she wasn't anymore, and she was trying to look like she hadn't been.

"What happened?"

She released a long sigh. "My yearbook class is full of bastards."

"Oh."

"And the school won't let me drop it." She looks directly into my eyes for a few seconds. "There's nothing you could do about it, don't worry."

"I…"

"Sorry, you just look really nervous. I didn't mean to make you feel uncomfortable."

"I'm just…" I say the first thing that comes into my mind, "hungry."

"Do you wanna go get something to eat? What class do you have now?"

"Athletic advancement."

She made a face. "Eww. Yeah, I'm not a gym person."

"Me either."

"Do you want to skip?"

"Sure."

"Okay, then let's get out of here. Just being in this hallway is creeping me out."

"Gym memories?"

"My teacher was a woman with a moustache. That thing traumatized me. Who do you have?"

"Ms. Shiraki."

"What's she like? I hear she has fangirls."

"She's okay."

Before I know it, I'm back outside in the weird city weather, walking by cars honking and screeching and rumbling and splashing. I try not to listen to it, blend it into white noise, but occasionally something will blare through my mental barriers and startle me.

The whole time I'm asking myself what I'm doing here. I hardly know this girl, and it's not like I care what she thinks of me. What's the point?

But she seems to know where she's going, so I follow.

Kyo must also be skipping class. We meet up with him underneath a traffic light.

"Hey," says Britt.

He smiles. Sort of. It's an awkward half-smile, but definitely a sign of friendliness.

"You know him?" I ask when we're sitting in a Vietnamese restaurant, having ordered spring rolls and two avocado milkshakes. All we can afford, thankfully, because it's also all I can manage to eat, at least in front of somebody.

"That was Kyo," she says.

"I don't think he likes me."

"He doesn't like a lot of people. It's his personality. Tohru and I are his only friends as far as I know."

"You're friends with Tohru?"

"I've seen her a few times. She's really nice. You know her, too?"

"Kind of."

"Sounds like you want to know her better."

"He got pissed off at me for being around her."

Britt laughs. "Oh, Kyo. You'll get used to him, he's not as bad as he pretends to be. He's like a Dragon Drop."

"What?" I fail to see how a type of imported candy relates to him.

"Tough on the outside, nice on the inside."

"Dragon Drops are colorful and… chewy."

"Let's not over-think this. So, you like Tohru, huh?"

"I hardly know her."

"But you like her."

Our food arrives. Service is fast during school hours. I eat a spring roll before continuing the conversation. "In the way one can like an almost stranger, I suppose."

"Which could be quite a lot."

"Why do you care?"

"You're fun to annoy." She takes a sip of her drink through the straw, rolling her eyes, the corner of her mouth quirked up. "Tell you what, she's in one of my classes. You want me to talk to her?"

"About… what?" I'm almost afraid to hear the answer.

She shrugs. "Stuff. Maybe I could arrange for us all to meet sometime."

"I doubt I'm her type."

Britt looks at me from over the rim of her half-empty glass for what feels like a long time. "I think you are." She has a way of talking that always leaves me unsure what she's implying.


	5. V: Small Figures In A Vast Expanse

A/N: Thank you loritakitochan, midnight 1987, Writer-Goddess22, Katsheswims, and StrawberryAkito. I really don't know what I can say to express how much your reviews mean to me. The feedback I've gotten on this story has helped me feel more confident in my writing and myself. I'm so glad there's an audience for this kind of story.

Summer is here so updates should be more frequent. Yay.

Chapter title comes from a song by Rilo Kiley.

**Deconstruction  
V: Small Figures In A Vast Expanse**

-/-/-/-

**Akito**

Sometimes (it's usually in the morning, on the rare days when I let myself wake up slowly, and it's just beginning to occur to me that my eyelids are up as I adjust to the soft sting of new sunlight barely dulled by cheap off-white curtains) I wonder how I got this way, what were the factors that made my life this and not something completely different.

I know other people wonder about it too, how I became this person, but it's been a long time since anyone actually outright asked. It must have been in grade nine that I'd get the most questions – no one has really gotten into my life since then, and when I was younger, still in elementary school, I think it was just… accepted. Akito the boy-girl, way it had always been, too familiar to be strange – and I'd come back with shrugs or sarcasm or something that seemed to make sense at the moment but didn't when I thought about it later, never an answer that satisfied either of us.

Would things be different if I'd been born a boy? Or if, somewhere along the line, I'd just _decided _to be a proper girl? It doesn't feel like something that can be chosen, I certainly would never consciously choose all these complications, but what if I did have a choice? What would I decide this time around? How would things be different?

I've tried telling myself I don't know, but I must. I have to. This is the closest thing to me, this _is _me, so how can I not know what 'me' is, what I am?

These words in my mind, they're a part of me, as much a part of me as my hand. Or my bones, that's a better comparison. Unseen but supporting the rest of me, shaping me, holding me together, connecting things. That's what I am, what I've always been, a consciousness and a body.

Why do the two seem incompatible?

When I was young I could fly. At least, that's what we called it. My father would pick me up, lifting me over his head, and I'd spread my arms, stretch my fingers out and reach across the sky. He'd run (in retrospect I know he was walking, and not even that fast, but to me, as the wind passed under/over my arms and between my fingers, lifting my then-long hair up like a cape or like the ribbons I'd seen the girl at the Asian cultural center in the city dancing with when we visited for some celebration, it felt like it, the wind, was supporting me as much as his strong, steady arms. Flying) and we'd laugh. He'd answer my questions about birds and airplanes and butterflies and I'd feel so close to everything. Up in the sky with G-d, when G-d was abstract and loving and not a thousand fractured contradictions.

The sun was usually going down by the time we walked back, painting the sky like spilled watercolours, somehow always mixing perfectly, never melding into the various shades of brown I usually ended up with when I tried to imitate it with my own paint set. My father would hold my hand in his, bigger and a shade darker than my own, and though I was always trying to prove how grown up I was, something made this okay. All the way home he'd still be answering my questions. I never ran out of questions when I was young, and he never ran out of answers.

I don't know what reminded me of that.

-/-/-/-

One of the girls who keeps looking at me during L.A. class comes to talk to me after the bell goes. "Hi. I'm Kagura."

"Oh," I say. Several other girls from the area where she sits stand off to the side, watching and giggling. I slide me books into my backpack and zip it shut. I'm at the door when she decides to run after me.

"What school did you come from?"

"Yellowbird Academy. You wouldn't have heard of it."

"Was it nice there?"

"No."

"Oh." Kagura looks uncomfortable, but she continues to follow me as I walk down the hall. "Do you like it better here?"

"I guess."

"That's good. Hey, do you know Kyo?"

"We've met."

"Isn't he cool?"

"We don't get along."

"Oh. Okay. Sorry." I look for sarcasm in her words but don't find it. I thought she was just talking to me so her friends could laugh at me. Maybe she really is just trying to be friendly. I probably shouldn't place too much stock in the possibility. "Where are you going?"

"The cafeteria."

"Me too! Would you like to eat with-"

"Akito!" Kagura and I both look up at the sound of Yuki's voice from down the hall. Although I still can't say I like him very much, relief spreads over me at the sight of him. He's coming towards us. "Hi," he says warmly, but Kagura backs away.

"Oh… I should go," she says, turning to walk back towards where she'd come from.

"See you later?" says Yuki, but she doesn't hear, or pretends not to. His face clouds briefly, but his expression is back to normal within seconds.

"What was with her?" I say.

Yuki shrugs. "I don't know. I don't think she likes me very much."

"Clearly."

"It is?" He pauses to check the notices on the sports bulletin board. "I guess I don't read people very well. Does she like you?"

"I'm not sure." Another thing I'm not sure of: would it be better or worse if she does? If she's just making fun of me, or worse, setting me up for something, like my first thoughts had been, it will save me the trouble of being surprised. And if she's sincere… she's _annoying. _

People like her I can't seem to trust.

"What sports do you do?" I ask Yuki, despite not really caring.

"Sprinting, cross country running, volleyball… I did football last year, but I quit." Try as I might, I can't picture the pale skinny boy with purple hair, black clothes, and silver necklaces playing football. The image is absurd. Not only does he look physically incapable, but I can't imagine him going over well with macho athletic types. _Why hasn't this kid died yet? _

I resume walking towards the cafeteria. Yuki jogs to catch up with me, but we don't talk anymore.

Rin, Haru, Jazzy and Kureno wave us over to the usual place. Well, their usual place, although the last few days I keep ending up here as well. I never plan on it, but one of them will find me and lead me here, or I'll start walking this way, catch myself, then realize I can't think of anywhere else to go and continue.

"I was going to send you your invite, but then I realized I didn't have your email," says Rin. I don't have to ask what she's referring to. Darren's party has been the primary conversation topic amongst them ever since we met, despite Darren himself never making an appearance.

"I don't have a computer at the moment," I say.

"I'll text it to you, then. What's your number?"

"I don't own a cell phone."

The whole group of them is looking at me oddly now, aside from Haru and Kureno who don't seem to have much facial expression, and Yuki who is more focused on the noodles he is eating than on the conversation.

"Dude, how do you _live?" _says Jazzy.

"I manage."

"Are you, like, one of those anti-tech, live-in-the-present people?"

"He has a point," says Rin. "We really don't know your story."

"I don't have one," I say shortly.

Rin says, "Okay."

"That's it? 'Okay'?"

"That's it."

"You don't have to talk about stuff if you don't want to," Haru joins in. "We're cool like that."

"Past is past," says Kureno.

"See?" Jazzy's silver-lipsticked mouth forms a wide smile. "No one gets judged, 'cause we're all pretty fuckin' weird."

"If you don't have a story now, you'll just have to start one," says Rin. "Now hold out your arm."

I do it before I have time to think about why she'd ask such a thing. She takes out a pen, holding the cap in her teeth as she begins to write on me, the ballpoint leaving trails of cool blue ink on my skin. Her look of intense concentration as she does this is shockingly attractive.

"There," she says, releasing me. I examine my arm to see wild but beautiful writing, like calligraphy, from the back of my hand up to the sleeve of my t-shirt. "That's the time and address. And that" – she points to a spiky ring of designs on my upper arm – "is what I am thinking of getting for a tattoo. I wanted to see how it looked on someone else first."

"It's nice," says Haru, and Jazzy thumbs-ups his agreement.

Yuki gives an exaggerated sigh. "Are you guys scaring Akito?"

"That gives me an idea." Rin winks at Jazzy conspiratorially. "Akito, give us your address. We're meeting at your place before the party. Thanks, Yuki."

Yuki pats me on the shoulder. "Whatever I've gotten you into, I apologize in advance."

-/-/-/-

The night before the day I met Kana for the first time, it was snowing. I was in the attic bedroom of my aunt and uncle's house (I think they were distant relatives or friends of distant relatives rather than my actual aunt or uncle, but that was what they'd told me to call them). My aunt and uncle were some of the few people in the family who celebrated Christmas. No, celebrated isn't really it. But they unloaded dusty boxes of stars and lights which looked like they'd been bought decades ago and strung them up around the house, which was more than the rest of the family did to mark the day. As I waited for sleep to come to me, I watched the thick snowflakes outside the window, lit dark reds and greens as the wind tossed them around through the beams of ancient decorative lights.

I got along well enough with my aunt and uncle. They were the first to volunteer when Hatori began his quest to find me a home, and made obvious efforts to welcome me. But truth be told, I think they were disappointed when I actually showed up.

I don't mean they were hostile to me. I was just clearly not what they'd expected, and they didn't manage to hide their surprise at this, or their hope that they could change me. They'd already raised two children, a son thirteen years my elder and a daughter the same by ten years, both moved out of the city to attend their respective universities.

They gave me their daughter's old room, along with her previous clothes and possessions. When I was younger, at a family gathering I'd heard one of my cousins disparagingly refer to her as acting like a white person pretending to be Asian, and while I still wasn't sure what exactly that meant, it might have helped explain her taste in clothing. I tried wearing it a few times, to show my appreciation for my aunt and uncle setting it out for me, but I couldn't do it for long. It was uncomfortable on more than one level, tight-fitting and frilly and several kinds of foreign.

I've never been ashamed of my background. My Japanese-ness just wasn't something I would advertise, mainly because it seemed misleading to do so. I'd lived in Canada all my life, couldn't use the Japanese language for anything more than ordering food. To me, being Japanese mainly seemed to be another of the things I'd had no choice in but was apparently bad at. _"How can you skip class when you're Japanese?" "How can you date a girl if you're Japanese?" "Isn't it against your culture to act like this?" "Won't your parents be mad at you for going against their ways?"_

I'm not sure when I fell asleep, because when I did I continued to dream of watching coloured snowflakes. I can remember waking up, though.

"Hi?"

I stared into the pair of wide, bright eyes that had appeared in front of me. "Nmghuh?"

"Oh my gosh, did I wake you up?" said the strange woman sitting at the edge of my bed.

"Yeah."

"I'm really sorry. I thought you were awake."

I don't remember the next thing I said, but I'm sure it was equally intellectual as "nmghuh".

"You had one of your eyes open. I'd been talking to you for quite some time. Did you happen to catch any of it?"

I shake my head, tangles of slept-on hair falling in front of my face. "What did you talk about?"

"Mostly I introduced myself. I should probably do that again, shouldn't I? I'm Kana."

"Akito."

"I know. Hatori mentioned you."

Things started to make more sense now that I was fully awake, grand realizations that would have been obvious any other time sparking in my head. "You're _that _Kana." Not that there was any other.

She smiled. I could see why Hatori was drawn to her. She was pretty, and clearly outgoing. She'd probably been the one to make the first move.

Hatori and Kana. I wondered how that would go.

-/-/-/-

**Tohru**

The teacher's voice falls over the room like snow as she talks about cell membranes. It's a nice voice, and even though she speaks plainly I can imagine her singing along to a piano or acoustic guitar. From the way she's moving, she must be gesturing at something on the board, too far for me to see. I look down at my own copy of the diagram, which she'd made for me before class. The enlarged paper covers most of my desk and curls up at the edges like wings.

I take notes, my hand brushing against the soft, dry paper as my ballpoint pen slides over it and makes different sounds depending on how fast and how hard I press down. Sometimes it sounds almost exactly like scissors, and other times wind, soundtracking the curves of letters memorized by my hand.

Cells. A word made of semi-circles and pillars to define the things making up all living beings. The definition of life, too small to be seen by people, even though they _are _people. Or, I mean, people are them. It's so hard to comprehend, past the scientific jargon, to actually think of myself like that, all these tiny pieces that are constantly growing and changing and duplicating. Dying and being born.

This sense of awe doesn't seem to help me pass my bio tests.

Something in my pocket suddenly starts to move. _Speaking of cells. _The vibrations have stopped almost as quickly as they began. Text message.

It must be from Kyo. I don't usually get texts from anyone else, especially not during school hours. He would have math class right now. Maybe he finished his work early and is just bored?

Or it could be Caylee. Daniel said that he thinks she might be having problems with that boy she's been dating, what if that's true and something happened? Or Ritsu could be panicking and need someone to talk to-

I wish I could check now, but I'll be seen if I hold the phone close enough to my face to be able to decipher the letters, and cell phones are officially not allowed in school, though most teachers know we have them and don't actually mind providing we don't take them out in class. And I just came back from the water fountain, so I can't excuse myself from the room again…

Could it have been my cousins? We're not on very good terms, but if something family related were going on, they'd let me know, wouldn't they?

I wait the next twenty minutes until the bell sounds, no longer able to concentrate on the lesson as my mind plays through all the possible scenarios of who could have sent the message and why.

When class ends, I almost run out of the room and down the hall. I would run, if I could do it without bumping into people and probably falling, making the trip take even longer. When I'm safely out of view behind the washroom door, I open my phone and hold it to my eyes.

It's from Kyo after all. He wants to meet outside rather than in the cafeteria like usual.

I laugh, get a drink from the water fountain to help get calm again, take the elevator down, feeling the floor vibrate through the soles of my shoes. As I step out, the soundscape instantly changes, from soft mechanical humming to a sea of teenage voices, and it alters again as the door to outside the school clicks shut behind me, less voices, the rush and swish of cars through air and wind through brittle-leaved branches, the grinding of tires, chirps of birds, shoes over grass and concrete and gravel. The air is sweet and cool and fresh, and will be so until the wind changes direction, carrying exhaust fumes and cigarette smoke across the street.

"Tohru! Yo, over here!" I turn towards his voice. His flash of orange hair stands out against the grey of sky and concrete and the dulled colours of buildings and the few natural surroundings that have been allowed to continue growing, grass and a few varieties of trees. This light dulls every colour except red and orange. Kyo's hair competes for visibility with the smeared lights of passing cars, like red oil pastel marks.

There's another orange blur beside him. Once I'm close, I can tell it's a girl from one of my classes. She's quiet and we don't talk very much, so it takes me a moment to remember her name. "Hi Kyo! Hi Britt!"

Kyo and Britt's "hey"s echo back at me. Kyo's voice is a bit rough but cool, natural as the wind. Britt's voice is like that too, usually, but this time it's like the high-pitched tones of a finger moving around the rim of a glass. I wonder what she's excited about.

"I was just about to go look for you," she says.

"About what?"

"I'll tell you later. By the way, you're going to the party, right?"

"I'm not sure-"

"Please? It's the only way Kyo will agree to show up, and he needs to start getting out."

"I'm still here you know," says Kyo.

"Aw, of course you are, darling," says Britt.

"Why did you just call me that?" he replies, voice loud with confusion.

"You seem so sad!"

"You're the one who's always sad!"

"No, I'm just tired all the time!"

"You don't seem tired now."

"Gyah, I meant most of the time!"

"Okay." They both go quiet as they notice I'm talking. "I'll be there. Now please calm down?"

I nearly fall over from the force of Britt's unexpected hug. "That makes me happy. Now I can go too."

"W-why?"

"I said I'd go if Kyo went, and he said he'd go if you went. So now we can all go!"

"Yay?"

"Yup."

"Fine, I'll be there," says Kyo, and Britt abruptly releases me and goes for him.

The conversation moves on to the new telephone area codes that are the current cause of city-wide annoyance, then to Britt's aunt's conspiracy theories, phrases that sound perfectly innocuous but apparently should not be typed into internet search engines, the differences between pop music from different countries, and the declining quality of boys' hairstyles. Britt chooses most of the topics, and I think she says more words in this conversation than everything I've heard her say up until today combined.

Kyo says he's crossing the street to go buy some food from the convenience store, and Britt says okay, and she'll wait here until he comes back. Remembering that she wanted to tell me something, I volunteer to keep her company. As Kyo crosses the street, Britt and I take seats on a bench.

"Did you still want to talk to me about… whatever it was?" I ask.

"Right, that. I was actually going to ask you if you knew Akito."

I smile. "Yes, I do. We ran into each other at the mall a while back, and we talked. She's very nice!"

"Oh," says Britt, too quickly, voice high again. Maybe she doesn't think Akito is nice, or is surprised that she would go to the mall? Or that I would go there? After a moment of quiet, Britt says, "Do you still see each other around?"

"Not that much, unfortunately. Actually, I don't think I've seen her since then."

"You guys should hang out more."

"You think so?"

"Yes. You make each other happy."

"Akito said that?"

"I could tell."

"Well, um, that's good, then. Thank you for letting me know."

"No problem.

"What are you guys talking about?" Kyo sits down beside me and offers Britt and I chips from a crackling bag in his hands. I take one. The salty taste lingers in my mouth a long time after I've eaten it, a milder version of the time my mom and I had gone sailing from British Columbia to America, and sometimes we'd go swimming where it was allowed, and saltwater would slip into my mouth and I'd still taste it even after washing it out with fresh water. It felt like I'd never get the taste out. I hated it at the time, but now the memory makes me want to smile, smile and cry, but I don't do either.

Britt says, "Just stuff."

To me, Kyo says, "You're walking home after school, right?"

"That's my plan."

"I'll walk you."

He always does, but I thank him. The bell goes, and as Britt stands up and starts walking, she calls back that she'll see me at the party.

I feel oddly popular today.

-/-/-/-

**Kagura**

We're in my room, and I'm recounting my experience with Akito as Kaye and Tammy listen with rapt attention.

"I failed," I conclude, slumping down sideways on my bed, my head landing softly on a stuffed teddy bear. I absently try to fix the threads holding its eyes – plain black buttons - on, tying in the sticking-out threads, frowning as I see the chips in my nail polish.

Kaye rolls her eyes, but Tammy gives me a sympathetic look as she sits down beside me. "No you didn't. You were the only one of us brave enough to go up and talk to him."

"Not that." I try to fix my hair, running my fingers through my fringe, even though I know I'll only end up messing it up more. "Distracting myself from Kyo. I couldn't do it."

Tammy and Kaye groan in unison.

"Why, Kagura?" says Kaye, stopping spinning around in her chair to put her head in her hands – whether it's because she's disappointed in me or because the spinning has given her a headache, I can't tell.

"Okay," says Tammy, "I'm trying to understand, and it's not working. Kyo, of all people?"

I sit up. "What's wrong with him?" I respond, more fiercely than I intend, only weakening my already-doomed cause.

Tammy says, "Is it his looks? 'Cause he's not bad to look at, I'll give you that, but he's antisocial as fuck."

"Akito's not very social either," I point out.

"He's different," says Kaye. "He actually has friends. I've seen him with the other goth kids. Kyo's always by himself or with that girl – which should be enough of a signal for you to back off."

Tears rise in my eyes as I nod. "I know. Really, I do know. But I can't stop thinking about him. Maybe it's just the idea of him…"

Kaye hugs me. "I'm sorry, that came out cruel. I just meant that you should find someone who appreciates you."

After they've left, and I've gone downstairs to get some cereal, my mom says to me in the kitchen, "Kagura, you know I don't like to pry into your personal life…" _Uh oh. _"But are you okay?"

"I'm fine. Why?"

"Lately, whenever I see you after you've been with friends, you seem sad."

"It's just stress, I guess. Teenage stuff."

"Okay. Just be careful, Kagura."

"You know me. I'm always careful."

"No. You're not. But I love you anyway, and I don't want you to get hurt."

"I'll try not to."

"Nobody _tries _to get hurt."

I'm sure some people do. It's the only way I can think of to explain some of the things I've seen. Some of the things I've done.

I let it go.

-/-/-/-

**Kyo**

Ever since I first met her, back in my first year of high school, Tohru's been writing scripts for movies. At first I thought this was strange, since the only way she can watch movies is on her computer, long after they're gone from theaters, and she doesn't even do this very often. But now I don't question it. It's a part of what she does.

She's yet to show me any of these scripts, "because they're not finished." She says she doesn't know when she'll be done any of them, but when she does she promises I'll be the first to read what she's made.

"At least tell me what your movies are about," I said to her once. "What are you writing about now?"

She really thought about this, closing her eyes behind her glasses, taking slow soft breaths, her face like she was dreaming something pleasant. Then she opened her eyes and her mouth curved into a smile. "It's about… people."

"Am I in it?"

"Of course. Everyone I know is in it. And some strangers."

"Sounds like a long movie."

"It's short now, and the script probably won't get much longer, but I want it to go on after it's finished."

My silence says enough for her to continue.

"Even after the film's played through, I want what's in it to mean something. The things that happened still going on, just behind the scenes. Like real life."

I think about the stuff she says sometimes. A lot, actually. Like, sometimes she'll say stuff that sounds like nonsense, but I'll think about it later and suddenly it's perfectly clear. Small words in a strange new order, expressing big thoughts.

Me, I'm different. I can't shut off like her, go into my own world, a world that's somehow more real than this one. This place is where I live and how I live, and all I've ever known. The rubber on my boots grips the concrete, and the cool wind raises bumps on my arms. The city sends me signals, pumping electric against my eardrums: I feel it in my chest like a second heartbeat, and the air I breath smells and tastes like evergreen and greenhouse gasses. Green brown grey blue world.

I dump my backpack off at the apartment and detach the heavy chains from my pants, tossing them into the abyss that is my room, then switch my boots for a worn pair of running shoes. I grab an apple out of the fridge, and then I'm out of there.

My dad won't be done work for a few hours, but it's not somewhere I want to be, even alone. The small space is crowded with artificial too-white light, but if I turn them off he gives me shit for sitting in the dark like some kind of freak when he comes back.

And all the mechanical noises: the hum of a sleeping computer or the dishwasher, along with sounds from downstairs and outside intruding through the thin walls. The fake quiet congests my thoughts, like at any moment it can amplify into a crippling explosion of no-longer-white noise.

I take comfort in the familiar rhythm of my footsteps as I descend the stairs faster than I should. The apple's not very ripe yet, but I kind of like it, my teeth piercing the cold waxy outside and sour juice spilling into my mouth out of the hard fruit. I'm done it by the time I reach the end of the stairs, tossing it in the garbage can on my way out, not bothering to look but the tinny clang behind me confirming it went in.

I cross the street then walk for about ten minutes, getting clear of the crowds and the traffic. My neighborhood. A few people I sort of know nod at me, but there's not many people out today. There usually isn't, in the fall. In the summer, the streets fill up with kids, throwing footballs or skateboarding or riding half-broken bicycles, mixing up languages as they shout to each other. We're mostly first or second generation immigrants in my neighborhood, usually from Russia, Mexico, Jamaica, or African countries. Being Japanese made me unique growing up, to the few people who cared. When I was a kid, my teachers had trouble understanding me because I'd acquired a complicated mixed accent and would scatter words from half a dozen other languages into my English sentences, not aware they weren't understandable to everyone. Teachers still don't get me, even though I've learned to talk normally.

My feet hit the path and I'm running. This is what I do to know I'm alive. My body falls into sync with it all, inhale run run exhale run run, my stretched-out shadow keeping pace beside me, showing how my hair and clothes get tossed around as I move. Familiar trees, parks, houses pass me by, then I run along the reservoir, the water hidden under a cracked layer of ice gone white from melted and refrozen snow.

I go here every day, so no one looks at me strange, not even in my t-shirt and camouflage pants, not most peoples' idea of good running clothes. I've had teachers pissed off at me for wearing the same thing to gym, and even shake their heads as I walked down the halls, like I wouldn't see or they didn't care if I did. But people here probably wouldn't look at me weird, anyway. They're mostly older, middle aged or more, guys with beards and women who look like aging folk singers, riding bikes or walking large, energetic dogs. I don't know if older people get less judgmental, or just these older people aren't, but they always smile at me as I go past, no matter what my hair's like or what I'm wearing.

My earbuds are playing some old punk music, 'cause most metal, even though it fills me up with power, is shit to run to. Messes up my pace. But when my music and my running are matched up right, my head clears up and I can think about stuff without random emotions flying out of nowhere and complicating everything.

Okay. The party. Now what am I supposed to do about that, anyway? I'm not looking forward to being surrounded by people I don't like while speakers pulse out shitty music. At least Tohru's going to be there. And Britt's not too bad. Really awkward, but she cares about me. I have to appreciate that.

I just don't get why we're going. Who are we trying to fool? There's a reason none of us ever go to these things, and it's not just that we don't get invited.

Whatever. I might as well go. If it sucks that bad I can ditch. It's not like I'll make Tohru and Britt go by themselves.

Some pale grey clouds drip on me, but I outrun any major downpours. I keep going once I reach the end of the path, end up by some shopping center, keep going until I hit a long straight road beside an empty grassy area. I continue this way for maybe another hour and a half, pass by some fenced-in cows and weird-looking animals I recognize as llamas.

The sun's getting low. The sky's grey-purple by the time I admit to myself that I need to turn around. But even faced with going back there, I feel better than I have in a long time.

Hell yes to endorphins.


	6. VI: the blast

A/N: Thanks go out to midnight 1987, Dragonpearl77, loritakitochan, and StrawberryAkito for their reviews. I promise to put Hatori and Kana in the next chapter. They were supposed to be in this one but the scenes turned out a lot longer than I planned. Sorry about keeping you in suspense for so long. The chapter title is the title of the poem at the start. I wrote it at camp and it seemed to fit. The commas are meant to be spaces, but fanfiction dot net wouldn't let me format it like that.

**Deconstruction  
VI: the blast**

come into our pockets  
we move to shadows  
fireworks slip between branches  
stars sizzle behind trees

flames flow through sap  
tiny spaces crowd out moments  
and together fill , , , , , , between us  
, , , ,closer

**Akito**

Rin and Jazzy show up at my apartment a few hours before the party is due to start, wearing school backpacks and matching expressions that cannot bode well for me. Jazzy is literally bouncing and Rin is smiling, none of her usual obvious irony in the curvature of her red lips. She begins rifling through my closet uninvited while he dumps their backpacks out on my bed, covering it in clothing. The few coloured articles stand out like graffiti on a black wall.

"You don't have much clothes," says Rin.

"No worries, I brought lots," says Jazzy. A ball of fabric hits me in the face. "Put these on."

I leave the room and close the washroom door behind me, sliding shut the lock. Examining the bundle in my hands, I find black jeans covered in silver buckles and chains, a long-sleeved fishnet mesh shirt, and a dilapidated t-shirt covered in a dizzying red-and-blue pattern.

I put them on, the t-shirt over the mesh, then check my reflection in the small mirror above the sink. I have to position myself in various uncomfortable ways in order to see all of me, such as lying on my back on the countertop, legs folded, knees nearly touching the ceiling, or standing on the lid of the toilet and leaning sharply sideways, a hand pressed against the door on the other end of the tiny room keeping me from falling. At one point I grab onto the shower rail, put my legs against the wall, then put one hand against the opposite wall, followed by my other hand letting go of the rail and joining it.

My first thought is that I have a great view of the back of my legs, followed by that I am straining muscles I did not know existed, then the realization that I have no idea how to get down. I grab at the rail again, miss, lose my balance, fall, land with my upper body in the bathtub and my legs on the floor. As I fall, I have a perfect view in the mirror of myself flailing like a seizuring fish.

Not a badly-dressed seizuring fish, though. Aside from the colours, this is nothing like what I would normally wear. The fishnets draw attention to my anemic-looking skin and the spindly muscle and bones underneath. None of the garments are loose enough for my taste. I look weak, easily hurt. Snappable. People who dress like this are the type others have strong opinions about.

In short, everything my own wardrobe has been selected to avoid. I'm ridiculous in this, a caricature, a trend. An image, an idea, all those easily destroyed things I never asked to be. I'm a person. That's not much, but it's something. And if I'm not the type of person who can be respected, I want to be the type that goes unnoticed.

I break myself away from the mirror and return to the living/bed/kitchen/dining room, where I find my self-invited guests wearing my clothes, and, in Jazzy's case, my curtains.

"Those are my curtains," I say, gesturing at the flowing white pieces of fabric he's wearing as a scarf and tied around his leg.

"I'll give them back after the party." He seems to think this is sufficient explanation and turns back to pulling my blue rainboots onto his feet. My jacket, shirt and pants, all assorted shades of fading black, are long and flowing on him. They almost look like a dress. I tell myself I'm only thinking this because he's wearing lipstick and eyeliner – both acidic blue.

Rin and Jazzy insist on applying a great deal of make-up and performing complicated hair styling procedures on each other and me, despite my protests. At least I manage to escape without lipstick. When they're finally finished, Jazzy has turned both my sink and random chunks of his hair blue and green, Rin's eyes appear to glow in the sparkling darkness painted around them, and the sun has gone down. As we move towards the party, the ink of the address still staining my arm, I don't recognize the spike-haired, whiteblackredblue person looking at me in reflections off building windows, standing between Rin and Jazzy and matching my steps, walking through a world of damp pre-winter air and seemingly never-ending sidewalks.

-/-/-/-

So: that's Darren. Our age, small, grey-and-blue hair carefully disheveled, a silver beer can in each hand as he greets us at the door. His "hello"s at Rin and I are only a formality, and after handing one of the cans to Jazzy, the two of them promptly abandon us.

That's how I know we're at the right place. From the outside, it's a large, plain beige building. Inside it would be almost empty, with no furniture unless the stairs and railings and metal and wood supports coming out of the walls, all being used as chairs, are counted, and if not for the crowd. I recognize some of these people from school, but it takes a while as many are as dressed up(?) as Jazzy and Rin. It's impossible to tell how many people make up the pulsing, swirling, ever-changing crowd, dancing to a variety of styles no matter how inappropriate the music. Waltzing to thrash metal, moshing to You Are My Sunshine. Someone's got their mp3 player on shuffle and every next sound is a lottery. The noises are so loud/strange/dominating and the flashing panchromatic lights so fast/bright/erratic that they seem to take up space themselves.

"Let's go," says Rin, an arm around my shaking shoulders leading me into the crowd. Her body sways as she moves her limbs around in fluid, complicated patterns, and I try to copy her. Her eyes meet mine. "You okay?"

"Fine."

"You're a good dancer."

She must not know her own skill because all I'm doing is flashing back a lackluster imitation at her. I say, "I've never done this before."

"Most people here haven't – not like this. Darren's cousin owns the club, and his present to Darren is letting him use it for the day."

"That sounds illegal."

"Maybe, maybe not. It went out of business years ago, so officially it's just a building with a kickass sound system and colourful lights now. There's no alcohol license, some people just brought their own."

"Do you go to things like this a lot?"

"When I feel like it."

The song switches to something that drowns out my words and thoughts. I feel like I'm floating. On a cloud, in a crowd. I completely lose myself – literally, if I were asked to say where I end and the people around me begin, I would be wordless. When the song finishes and my trance stops, I look around for Rin but can't find her.

My mouth is dry. There's thick, foul-smelling smoke in the air. As I'm trying to fight my way through the barrage of teenagers, someone behind me puts their arms around my waist. "Where are you going?" Jazzy lays his head on my shoulder. I try to disentangle myself from him, but he just laughs and takes both my hands. "Don't leave me! Let's dance."

Resistance is futile. He's physically stronger than me, not that it's going to come down to that. I'll re-hydrate myself once this is over – right now I can't even push past the mob, never mind figure out where I am in the room. Right now, it's easier to let someone else lead me. I don't even have to imitate, I just follow. Step step step, sway, step step step. A classical dance to – what is this? - something with frenzied, incoherent singing and drums like smashing trashcans with baseball bats.

We end up beside Kureno, who in black jeans, a white dress shirt, a black-and-green striped tie, and minimal eyeliner, stands out as one of the most normal-looking people here. Dressing up as little as possible so as to blend in, his efforts only hurting his goal. Noticeable because he's trying so hard not to be, a flash of white, the lights shooting rainbows through his flying blond hair as he dances with a girl I've never seen before, someone purple-dreadlocked and green-dressed. Her movements parallel Rin's, and his, I'd imagine, mine from a few moments ago.

Jazzy and Kureno start talking about something – or Jazzy says words and Kureno makes polite noises when they're appropriate. I don't know what Jazzy's talking about. The bits I can make out over the music seem to be in code. I wonder if he even knows what he's saying. "So then she was like... thought I was joking! All this fuckin' time... He asked me... this guy, on the train... totally blue... still angry at me for the death metal... slightly male... options! What's politics got to do with... overthrow that, that stuff... y'know... He called me a y'know! What's with... what's with... shoes? Oh. My hand hurts."

It's about this moment I realize he's drunk out of his mind. That also explains why he's started to use me as a support to stand rather than a dance partner.

The girl Kureno's been dancing with keeps looking over her shoulder at a guy behind them. I think Kureno realizes this because after taking a long look at her he announces, "I'll go get us some drinks. What do you guys want?" Like he's trying to excuse himself before she can desert him. That's what I would do in his position, at least.

"Red bull and vodka," says Jazzy.

"NO."

"Fine then, I'll take a... a... oh shit, I'm gonna puke." Jazzy slumps down off my shoulder and onto his hands and knees on the floor.

"Here, I'll help you find the bathroom," says the guy Kureno's date has been eyeing. He extends a hand, which Jazzy takes, lifting him from the sea of feet. Arms around each other's shoulders, he helps Jazzy stagger out of sight.

Purple Dreadlocks Girl fixes the back of Jazzy's multicoloured head with a glare that could bore through Kevlar. That is, for all of the fifteen seconds it takes her to find someone new to dance with, and she's smiling again.

"You?" says Kureno to me, all that remains of our tiny crowd.

"Soda." He nods and fades into the swarm.

I catch sight of a nearby staircase and push my way towards it. Success! The crowd thins out around the edges, and I manage to get a space on the steps. There are already a lot of people sitting here, but after being out in that, this is spacious. Even the air seems less smoky.

Nearby, a teenage couple is fighting. At least, I think they're a couple, and I think they're fighting. I can only see the back of his head, and even though she smiles a lot, it looks like she's yelling, and one of her hands is tugging at the ends of her red-blond hair.

She's walking towards me, and he turns to follow her.

Yuki?

His hair is different, now black with streaks of silver as well as the same violet slash, but it's definitely him. The expression, like he's posing for a passport photo and not allowed to show emotion, confirms it.

She stops right in front of me, looks me in the eye, and says, "Do you know this guy?" Jabs a finger at Yuki.

I try to be as safe as possible with my answer. "He goes to my school."

"Is he always like this?"

Yuki himself saves me the trouble of having to say, "Like what?"

She throws up her hands. "Like you're waiting for something to go wrong at any moment! Like you can't just live and let stuff happen, you've got to be making some escape plan in your head all the time!"

He is silent.

She sighs. "Just like that. You won't even get angry with me, you don't defend yourself, you just take it."

"You want me to be angry?" It's not a threat. It's confusion.

"I want you to be _something_. It doesn't even feel like we're in the same room – I've had text messages more passionate than – than... whatever this is!" She takes a long, loud breath, smiles again, massages the corners of her eyes with her fingertips. I notice she isn't wearing makeup. "Anyway," she says, turning back to me. "Sorry you had to see that. Want to go dance or something?"

I have enough survival instincts not to refuse. The song playing now is slow and full of wind instruments. Our movements start out awkward, as she keeps expecting me to lead and I'm not entirely sure how, and we end up tripping over each other's feet a lot. Finally, we both let go and settle for swaying around in the same general vicinity.

Someone taps my shoulder and I spin around to face Kureno's crooked line of a smile. He hands me a wine glass of fluorescent green liquid. "I asked for soda," I say.

"That's what I got."

I bring the concoction up to eye level. There are a lot of bubbles in it, a constant stream of them bursting as they hit air. I take a sip. My mouth fills with saccharine candy-water. Nothing like any alcohol I've ever had, so maybe it is soda. My thirst overcomes any misgivings about ingesting something a colour not found in nature, and I drain the glass too quickly to taste anything more. "Thanks."

Kureno leaves, but the girl is still here. She does look good, her whole body in motion. I don't think I would have noticed her, in this sensory overload, if she hadn't started talking to me, but since she did... I think I'm glad, that she did. That she chose me out of everyone, even if just for one moment. I take her hands again, and although her smile shrinks her posture relaxes. We start spinning, following impulses rather than any actual dance guidelines, and our impulses are fast. As we move, she talks.

She tells me about how her younger brother is in elementary school, and how she's worried about him fitting in because her family just moved here. She tells me about how she's a year and a half older than half her mother's age, and how it bothers her to think that the things she does now could affect her for the rest of her life. She tells me about how years ago she found an old photo album at a friend's house and had stolen it, and she still has it at home. She says her friends parents were some kind of hippies, and in the pictures they have clashing patterned clothing, puffy hair and glasses that take up most of their faces, but she used to wish they were her parents. She tells me sometimes she still does. Even though they would have dressed her oddly, because then she would have an excuse for turning out this way, she says, and she laughs.

She talks for about five minutes, barely pausing for air, like she's the punchline to some great joke. And then she just stops, all at once, like a book with the last page ripped out, not even a period at the end of the sentence fragment. There's no trace of her smile. I wonder, if she could, if she'd take it all back.

Our edges are blurred and the world is tilting back and forth. We stop spinning. "Thank you," she says.

"Thank you," I say.

"Thank you," she says.

Each bright light-flash is like a wave that hits my world and rocks it back and forth. I don't know whether to wait for the storm to pass or to jump into the ocean of colours.

She rocks my world. What a terrible joke.

O v e r l o a d.

She's reading my mind. She has my hand again, is leading me away from all of this, into soft, cool darkness. The lights can't reach here. Even the all-consuming sounds are dulled. Where are we?

Her lips brush mine. I know I should pull back, that this will only cause complications in the future, that nothing good is going to happen if I do this, but I don't, because somehow, I want to remember what it's like to be this close to someone. It's been such a long time. So I let her kiss me, because shouldn't I want that, wouldn't that make sense? It just happens. And then it ends.

"Sorry," she says. And then she leaves.

What just happened?

It occurs to me that she still hasn't told me her name, and maybe she never will. Knowing this feels like walking down a flight of stairs in the dark, thinking there's one more step than there is and falling a few strange centimeters.

I should get back to the party. I'm in a corner somewhere, what looks like a storage area, and it's probably not somewhere I should be. Maybe, if I don't get out of here now, I never will.

So I start walking, following the flashes and booms, going off like little bombs. My seasickness is a bit better. I've got that floating feeling again. It's more intense this time, a carnival ride where I've been upside down whirling in the sky for so long I can't remember what normal feels like.

I think I fall down but then I think I imagined it, because I can't remember it in any detail, although it was just a moment ago... I think? Nevermind. Somehow I end up sitting on the stairs again, beside Yuki and Britt. They're talking about something, but I don't feel like I'm part of the conversation, so I tune it out and watch the crowd.

Green-haired boy.

Blue-haired girl.

Pink-haired I-can't-tell.

Yellow-haired does-it-matter?

They're all rainbows. Epiphany: everyone here, every individual in this twisting mass, is a rainbow. Some are black and white rainbows, but still rainbows. I laugh. It's funny.

People are looking at me strangely. How come no one else gets it? I laugh again, at the cluelessness of everyone around me. Britt's smile looks like it will slide off her face. She pretends she sees it too.

I'll enlighten her. I take her hands like Jazzy took mine, and I lead her into the rainbows. It feels like there are tiny fires inside me. They keep me warm but they don't let me stand still. If I stop moving I will burn burn burn burn - down to the ground. To nothing. Not even ash. Poof. Gone. Laugh.

"You're in a good mood," says Britt.

"You're a rainbow," I inform her.

"Oh," she says. A nod and another sliding smile, slipping sideways like lightning blinking off ice.

Rin is dancing. I see her. I shout something at her, but I don't think she hears. I don't mind. Just looking at her is enough for now. Her hair is as black as crow's feathers, a long sheet of oil-slick-rainbows that moves around her. Flying black hair.

Falling black hair.

I'm fifteen, I think. Am I fifteen? Am I sixteen. Am I six. Am I sixty! I am somewhere. Home. Not-a-home. Somewhere. I have a key. It's cold in my hand. In my mouth it would taste like metal and blood. I've never tasted it, but I know I've smelled it. The key. For some reason.

I'm turning the key in the lock because no one answers when I knock. I'm here to thank her for the present she sent me. Why did she send me a present? I have no idea. It was a handheld video game system. I'd wanted it when I was in elementary school. She'd refused. Why would she send me that? Never her idea of a suitable present for a girl. Never her idea of a suitable girl.

Maybe I am here to see if she is okay.

She's not. She is in the center of the room, on the floor. Her eyes are open, a little, white showing, it doesn't see me. Her hair is all around her, like dead snakes. There's blood. I don't know where it's coming from. Where it came from. Her. Arms legs mouth, I think, one of those or all. It will never wash out of the carpet. She'd hate that. Hate hate. Hate hate hate. Her mouth is open, also. Saliva leaked out of it. So undignified. She's falling apart, spilling herself out. Dying in the living room. I think she's breathing, just a bit, but I can't tell. I can't do anything, I'm nothing, I'm no one, why am I here? Why not someone else?

Because there is no one else.

I look for the phone. I find the phone. It's useless. Smashed plastic, wires gutted, shards cutting my fingers, the cord like twisted spiders legs snapped and tied together. I run to the neighbors' house. I'm screaming, I almost break down their door, they ask what's wrong, phone phone phone phone phone I cough phone phone. They give me the phone. I'm dialing, my hands stabbing at the buttons, leaving blood on them, mine and hers, my mother is dead I say or she's dying do something do SOMETHING that's your job hold on she says I'm just the receptionist we'll send someone emergency will be there as soon as possible what's your address I tell her I yell her I spit out the numbers I'm collapsed I'm I'm I don't know what I am.

I shut my eyes but I can't stop seeing her, and it goes on and on and on, nightmares covering reality, like a swarm of locusts blotting out the sun and devouring everything they touch.

-/-/-/-

"Fuck rainbows," I moan.

"Dirty mouth," says a voice. Ironically, it sounds like Jazzy's.

It takes a long time to convince my eyes to open. When they do, I'm back at the party. There are faces all around me, above me, making up my sky under the ceiling. We're off to the side somewhere, away from all the floor-smashing feet, in the dark. Like where I'd kissed that girl. I can hardly remember what she looked like now.

There's cold water on me. Rin is holding a wet cloth against my face. "Thank you," she says under her breath. I don't think anyone is meant to hear it.

Kureno, Britt, Yuki, Rin, Jazzy. They're all here. I make myself smile. I try to sit up, but I fail.

Then I realize what happened. I stop smiling. I stand, determined not to show that inside my head, the world is flipping over and over.

"You did this to me!" I point at Kureno, whose hands fly up like he's in front of the police.

He says nothing. His eyes are wide.

"What do you mean, Akito?" says Yuki.

"He did something to my drink. He did something to me! You-you bastard, you drugged me! You tried to kill me!"

"What?" he says. His face drains of colour. He's faking surprise well.

"Hold on. Why are you accusing him of this?" says Rin.

"Yeah," says Britt. "Maybe something happened to you. Maybe someone really _did_ drug you, but it wasn't Kureno. I know him, he wouldn't do that."

"I don't _care _what you know about him, he did this! I hate you! You're disgusting!" I hurl more insults at him, then I run, help up by my anger.

Jazzy grabs my arm. "Let him go," says Rin, and Jazzy does.

-/-/-/-

The outside air is a relief on my fevered skin. I hug the concrete around me, under me. Everything goes black. I accept it.

Everything goes white.

Everything goes black.

I'm not sure how long I'm out for. When I open my eyes, my vision is split between cement and sky. Blue and grey. I breathe. Air fills my lungs. It's nice.

I'm on the roof. There's a rail so no one falls or jumps over. It's the most useless rail I've ever seen. I stretch my hands over it. Spread out my fingers like feathers. Wings. I pull my hands back in, press my palms against my hot, dry eyes. I can fly but I can't cry. When I take my hands away, I see tiny sparks. These quickly fade into the real world.

Soft rush of passing cars. Breath. Cold world hot skin. I'd like to stay like this forever, right here, right now.

Someone is humming. I look around, see a small blond boy sitting at the top of the stairs. He looks right at me. "Yay! You're awake."

"Who are you?

"I'm Momiji. I've seen you at school!"

"I'm Akito."

"Nice to meet you!"

"Yeah. You too." There's no sarcasm in my voice. No sincerity, either. Just words. "Why are you out here?"

He looks sad for a moment. "I was lonely in there."

"I can understand that."

"Someone was looking for you. A girl. She's down there." He stands, pointing over the edge of the roof.

Tohru. She's sitting on a bench with Britt. They're not talking, but they don't look mad at each other. I think Britt is crying, or almost crying.

There's a ladder on the side of the building. I climb over the rail, down the ladder, rust flaking off onto my hands.

"Akito-" says Britt, when I reach the bottom.

"I don't want to talk about it."

"Are you okay?" asks Tohru.

"Yes," I say. "Now, I'm okay." I can't say about before. I can't say about later. But now, yes.

"I'm sorry," says Britt. "About what happened to you."

"Yeah."

"Can I tell them you're okay now?"

"Do what you want." To Tohru, I say, "Let's go somewhere."

"That sounds good."

She takes my hand. I don't know if it's because she wants me to lead her, or something... else. It doesn't seem like I am leading her. She's not leading me, either. Her hand feels so good in mine. I think that's what matters.

We're in a park, now. There are some trees around us, green with needles or yellow with leaves. The perfect yellow before they turn brown.

We can still hear the sounds of the party, stripped down to drum and bass and ideas. "Do you... want to dance?" she says.

"Yes," I say. And we do.

We dance all around the park. Between the trees, over the paths, through playground equipment, among the uncut, windblown grass. I start to sing something. I don't know why and I don't know what. The words pass right through me, and then they're gone. My voice jumps too high and too low, no in-between. That's okay. For now, it sounds good. She even tells me it sounds good.

We laugh at secret jokes. We laugh because it feels good. We laugh because we are alive, and because we are here, and because we are okay, and because we are together.

But whatever happened to me before, it's over. This isn't a drug, it isn't an old memory, isn't my imagination. It just is.

Rain starts to fall. Right out of the blue sky, right on to us, like a... like a miracle. That's the only word that works. We keep dancing as it lands on us, cools us, slips through our clothes. I don't know how I know how to move like this. I don't need to know anything right now. I just need to be here with her. I've needed this a long time.

I'm kissing her. She's kissing me. I can taste the rain on her lips. I move my fingers through her soft hair and the water-droplets clinging to it. My hands explore the wonder that is the back of her neck.

We don't say anything.

We just are.

It's amazing.

**Kagura**

"_Hello?"_

"_Hey, Kagura, it's Kaye."_

"_What's up?"_

"_I couldn't tell you this in front of Tammy, but I think you should know something."_

"_Is something wrong?"_

"_No, it's nothing like that. It's just – I got the address to that party. The one all those emo and goth and punk and metalhead kids kept talking about. Kyo would be there. Do you want it?"_

_I almost swallow my tongue. "Y-yes! Of course!"_

"_Okay." She reads it out to me. "Be careful." _

_She hangs up with a _click _before I can think of anything to say. _

The conversation replays over and over in my head like the time I dropped my mp3 player and it played the same thirty seconds for what could have been hours – I'd been multitasking and not really listening to the song, but when I took my headphones out it was still repeating in my head, that half-a-minute. _Hello, your sky is calling mine, i call, i reach for more lightness, hold on to your moon, forever needles through. _Those aren't the real lyrics. The song is in one of the many languages I can't understand. But that's what I hear, and in my mind it makes sense, and in my mind it's an amazing love song. In my mind a lot of things are love songs, but this is one of the best.

Lights pour panchromatic from the windows of the building Kaye told me to go to. Thumping bass and teenage shouts slip through the walls and echo through the street. It's dark outside, but not really. It's one of those nights where it should be dark, but the sky never goes black because of all the light falling into it, and it's the colour of the bubblegum on the train station floor that's been stepped on so much that it's a pinkish dark grey.

I make strange associations at this hour. I'm in one of those moods that I try not to get into, because even though they make me feel like I can run around the world or paint a billboard-sized masterpiece or sing in public, I crash afterwards with no warning, and when I crash, I don't even feel like breathing.

I can't go in there. I physically _can't, _my feet won't move forward. I've been standing here just _staring _at the place. I shouldn't go in there, anyway. I'll only do something to embarrass myself, in the state I'm in, and I'll spend weeks obsessing over it, and I'll lose the self-respect it's taken me so long to build up. I can't go in there. But would I, if I could?

Why did I come here?

"'ey!" My head jerks back at the sound of the voice behind me. "Who a' yo?" A strange voice. Neither male nor female, or it's both, accents mixed into a brand new dialect.

It belongs to a girl with messy brown hair and tan skin. Even though she's average height and weight, and her ripped jeans and red hoodie could belong to anyone, there's something about her that radiates differentness from everything I've ever known.

"I'm sorry!" Not knowing what I'm apologizing for, my voice is unaccented (as far as I can tell) and comes out in a squeak.

"Cris, leave her alone." A tall blond person steps forward out of the shadows and puts a hand on Cris's shoulder. Then she looks right at me and says, "Sorry about her. She's drunk."

She's beautiful. Her bleached hair is long and free, falling over her right eye, the ends fluttering in the light wind. She's wearing black boots, a long, butterfly-patterned skirt, white t-shirt and black jacket, and she's also got a differentness to her, but not the same way as Cris has. A different differentness. I'm not sure what I'm trying to say. I think I like being around her, maybe. I like the way she stands like nothing can hurt her, like she's comfortable just standing around, being. I wish I were her friend.

"Yeh. Ri-illy drunk. Surry about tha'." Cris pushes her sunglasses down on her nose, revealing bloodshot eyes, and smiles in a way that makes me a bit frightened she'll try to bite me. Her teeth are crooked but star-white.

The blond girl looks at me like I'm a math equation she's stuck on, although she doesn't look like she spends her time working on math. "Are you lost or something?"

"No, I'm... actually, I don't know what I am." I laugh, trying to turn it into a joke. Cris laughs, but the blond girl doesn't even smile. I'm not very funny.

"We can walk you somewhere, if you want. It's not safe for someone like you to be out around here at this hour, dressed like that."

"What's wrong with how I'm dressed?"

She doesn't say anything.

I look down at myself. Pink skirt, high white socks, sequined shirt, teddy-bear backpack. "Oh."

That finally gets a smile from her.

"I'm not as defenseless as I look, you know."

"That's no great achievement."

"Go ahead, try any move you want on me. I can block it."

"Any move?"

"Any."

She walks right up to me, her hands held above her head. Her green eyes look into mine, holding me, trapping me. Her mysterious smile makes me want to smile as well, even though I have no idea what the joke is. She's really, really close to me.

"Ping," she says, as her fingernail lightly flicks my forehead.

Laughing, she and Cris begin to walk away. "Wait!" To my surprise, they stop. "What's your name?"

"It's Arisa." They resume walking.

"I'm Kagura. Now that we know each others' names, we can be friends."

"So that's how it works, huh?"

Cris says, "Nice to met ya."

I catch up with them. "Let's go somewhere."

"You said you didn't have anywhere you needed to be."

"I don't. I just want to go somewhere."

"Where?"

"Anywhere. Where are you going?"

"Nowhere."

"That works. Let's go nowhere."


	7. VII: Relief Next To Me

Chapter title once again comes from a Tegan and Sara song. I wrote this chapter over the course of two days, wanting to get in another update before I leave the country tomorrow for the rest of summer, since this is that last I'll have of computer access until I get back. I'm very proud to have finished this. Please note that I made up the mentioned musicians and movie, and that I don't own the briefly mentioned Pokemon.

Thank you xxMikeyxx and loritakitochan. And see, I remembered Hatori!

The bit about diamonds and stars I learned from reading Salman Rushdie. That section in his writing was so astoundingly beautiful I reread it about five times. Not trying to plagiarize, just wanted to share it.

**Deconstruction  
VII:** **Relief Next To Me**

**Hatori**

Knuckles white, her hand gripped the armrest of the airplane chair. She'd asked for a window seat, and even though her head was turned away from me, I saw her face reflected in the window, pale, frowning.

I put my hand on hers and she looked up at me, wide-eyed, then relaxed. Her hand felt like coldness and intensity. "Are you all right?" I whispered to her, catching the faint, pleasant scent of her shampoo, which changed frequently, but always reminded me of spring.

"Yeah... I'm..." She brushed her hair back with her fingers, pulled it into a ponytail with one of the thin, black bands from around her wrist. "I'll be fine. I'm sorry, I always forget how much planes bother me. It seems like every time I get on one my life changes completely." She wrapped her arms around my shoulders, pulled me in as close to her as our seatbelts would allow. "And I like my life right now."

I ran two fingers along the area from her cheekbone to behind her ear, like tucking back a stray hair. Not that there was one. Then I kissed her lightly on the nose, which made her smile.

It was snowing on the runway, the lights from the plane causing the flakes to blaze against the blackness of the night sky and the asphalt, becoming nothing as they hit.

We were six months into our first year at university after applying to the same one and both getting in, not hesitating to leave our old town behind us.

When the news of Ren's suicide attempt reached me, I wondered if I ever should have left. And Akito being the one to find her... the thought of how traumatic that must have been would sneak up on me suddenly, like a gust of icy wind. I had to go back, to buy a ticket for the first plane going anywhere near there. A six hour flight, then a two hour drive. When I told Kana where I was going, she never paused to consider not coming with.

-/-/-/-

"She talks in her sleep."

"You've slept with her?" Shigure raised an eyebrow.

"Only in the literal sense." We were sitting on lawn chairs on his porch, looking out at road and gardens. It was a uselessly beautiful day, made of heat and colour, too hot to do anything but look at it. I felt like an ant trapped under a magnifying glass.

This was a long time ago. I'd been going out with Kana for almost a month. Most of my life, the things that happened before then, I can barely remember. Or I don't try to.

Shigure's eyes and most of his face were hidden behind opaque sunglasses and the rim of a baseball cap. He'd even eschewed the traditional robes he was so fond of in favour of an old-looking loose white t-shirt and a pair of tacky shorts covered in a pattern of exotic flowers.

He bounced the basketball, from the game we've long since given up on, lazily at his side, managing to dribble it twice before it escaped into the road, stopping in a yard across the street. Neither of us made any move to retrieve it. "So what's she talk about?"

It was after a school dance that it had happened. We had been flirting with each other, mostly awkwardly, but we'd had some amazingly comfortable moments, too, and when I was around her, there was an overwhelming feeling of _rightness _to the world. Of meaning. Of fun. We'd gone to the dance together, and though I was never much of a dancer, aside from the formal dances we'd been taught in gym class, the steps of which I still had (and have) memorized, like most things school related, I can truly say I enjoyed the experience. If I looked ridiculous, it would make her laugh, and then I would laugh too, and we would be laughing together. And if I did something right... well, that was good too.

She became suddenly quiet on the drive home. I asked her if she had a curfew, if her parents would mind that she'd stayed out so late. She shook her head, but her face seemed to close up, serious as a statue but something uncontrollable in her eyes.

I had since learned that her parents were one of the topics not to be mentioned to her, along with the years from when she was between ages seven and fourteen. It wasn't that she never talked about these things. Just that she would only speak of them on her terms, mentioning them briefly, anecdotes or sights or conversations, then move on to another topic. From what she said, she didn't seem to dislike her parents, or to have had a particularly unpleasant upbringing, but a lot can go unsaid.

Her house was enlarged by the silence of emptiness. At the doorway, when we embraced, she held me with surprising force. There was nothing aggressive about it, but she seemed afraid of something. "Don't go," she said.

I said, "Okay."

I was going to sleep on the couch, but she insisted I stay beside her. She took a long time to fall asleep, and the fact that I knew this meant I must have taken even longer. She lay flat on her back, stared open-eyed at the ceiling above, barely moved. Until she was asleep. Then she couldn't stay still, throwing the covers and pillows onto the floor, kicking my side. She was arguing against something. Most of what she said was mumbled, but sometimes it was alarmingly clear.

By the time she stopped, the sun was already starting to rise. I picked a bed sheet up off the floor and lay it over her. Then I fell asleep as well.

We greeted the next day in our slept-in semi-formal wear.

To Shigure, I said, "She said something about a fire and a schoolhouse."

He snorted. "Tori's dating a pyro."

"I know it goes against your nature, but could you stop being an idiot for one moment? She's not a pyromaniac. I think it might have been a memory from her childhood. She grew up oversees. She could have seen all kinds of things."

"Word traveler, huh? She's even crazier than a pyro, then." Noticing my expression, he says, more seriously, "And I thought you said she was Canadian."

"She is. She was born here, left, then came back."

"And where did she leave _to_, per se?"

"She spent four years in Africa. She also lived in Australia and Poland. That's all I know for sure. I got the impression her parents were some sort of emergency physicians, and they traveled a lot for work."

"Africa is a continent, not a country. Honestly, Tori, you should know these things. You're supposed to be the academic one, whereas I'm simply the suave and handsome best friend."

"I know it's not a country, Shigure. She just hasn't told me specifically where she lived there."

"Well then, that means there's a great number of tragedies and conflicts she could have born witness to."

"Like what?" I'm listening now.

He drums his fingers along the side of the now-empty glass he'd been sipping lemonade from. The rhythm reminds me of hoofbeats. He proceeds to name a dozen or so civil wars and conflicts between rebel groups and governments and between rebel groups and other rebel groups.

"You made some of those up," I say, wanting to believe he invented them all but knowing better than to entertain such a hope.

"Yep. But it will be up to you to find out which ones. I'm actually surprised you don't already know. You do get better grades than me."

The truth is, at this point in my life I did not know a lot about most topics I did not anticipate to be graded on. The events Shigure brought up had been only briefly noted or entirely omitted from the history books I'd studied. I said, "How do _you _know these things? It almost makes it seem as if you care about what happens in other countries. To people who aren't you."

"Oh, of course not. It's research for my novel. Disaster sells."

"You... actually, I don't think there's a word for people like you. And I hope there are never enough of you to require one."

"Don't be a meanie, Tori." He walked across the street, picked up the basketball, and tossed it to me. I caught it, took three shots at the frayed net and made two of them. Swish swish clunk.

I passed to Shigure, now returned from his journey. We took lazy practice shots for a few minutes, then put the ball away when heatstroke started to kick in again. On our way inside Shigure's house to numb our minds with video games and commemorate our seventeen-ness, the dwindling time we had left before officially entering the world of adults, he said, "Seriously, though. I hope it works out between you two. You both deserve to finally get a break."

-/-/-/-

**Kagura**

We go to Arisa's place. She lives in a basement. When we walk through the upstairs part of the house to get there, she hisses at me to be very quiet, and even drunk Cris is being visibly cautious not to bump into any of the furniture, which seems to be perilously balanced on itself. I can hear someone snoring in the house, but once we get down the stairs, careful not to creak them, we can talk at normal volume.

Arisa's room is noticeably more organized than the rest of the house, even though it looks like a normal teenage room. There are some stuffed animals that remind me of my own, and I feel myself get calmer. There's really no reason I should be scared, now that the mysterious snoring person isn't going to be woken up by us and go into a rage (I have... this weird mental image of a rampaging Snorlax).

A loud earthquake of a snore causes me to literally jump. But when I turn around, I see it's just Cris, flopped down on Arisa's bed and instantly out of it.

Arisa says, "You can stay here, too. If you want."

For a moment, words escape me. What a strange expression. Like I'm chasing after the words I know but they're running away, like little animals. "I thought you didn't like me."

She blinks. The little animals seem too fast for her, too. "Is that what it seems like?"

"A little bit."

"I'm sorry. Really, I am. Jeez, was I that much of a bastard?"

I don't say anything. She says, "Look, I'm a jerk sometimes. I don't mean it. Truthfully, I think you're pretty cool. So there you have it." She yawns. "An official Uotani apology."

I can't tell what proportion of what she's just said is a joke and how much is serious, but I can tell she's not trying to offend me.

"Thanks," I say. She flashes a thumbs-up and smiles, showing teeth.

I call my mom on my cell phone and tell her I'm sleeping over at a friend's house. "With no pajamas or sleeping bag?" she says. I tell her it's fine, there's stuff here. She offers to bring mine over, but I say she doesn't have to. She asks which friend and I lie and tell her Tammy. She asks if she should pick me up in the morning, but I tell her I'll walk, it's not far (at least that much is true).

Arisa is looking at me when I hang up the phone, lying sideways on her bed. Her whole face is sideways. A vertical line of sight. She looks really tired.

"What?" I say, followed by a short, confused laugh.

"Nothin'. Just thinking. Do you think about it?"

"About what?"

"My supreme sexiness."

I stare at her.

"That was a joke. Dammit, I know, I'm weird when it's late. Didn't mean to scare you. No, what I meant was, what you just did, talking on the phone with your mom. Do you think about it, like everything you'll say, or does it just kind of happen?"

"Are you mad at me for lying to her?"

"That's not what I meant. It's just..." She sighs, takes a long breath like she trying to taste the air. I'm not sure why she'd want to do that. The air smells kind of like old food. "I have to write this thing for school, okay? A short story about an event that happened to my family. And I have to know what it's like to talk to a mom on the phone. Or at all."

I think about this. About what it would be like to make up a story about my family, if it didn't happen, if I didn't have my family. What it would be like to by story-less. "It just kind of happens, I guess."

"Thought so. Damn. That makes it so much harder to write."

Cris lets out another massive snore, startling us both.

"Anyway," says Arisa. "I need sleep. Good night." She turns over so that she's looking right at the wall, her back to me.

I sleep on the floor, wrapped in several blankets. There's more than enough room for me on the bed, but this actually looks more comfortable. There's a piece of paper with a drawing of a tree on it a few centimeters from my nose. I pick up the paper and see that it's a card. Inside, it says, "Marry chrismiss!! from Cris." I look at the outside again. The tree is hand drawn. It's incredibly detailed, with attention to the shapes of each branch beneath the hundreds of individual leaves. They cast shadows on each other, affecting the whole look of the tree.

Looking at it fills me with emotion. I'm not sure what emotion it is, but it makes me want to cry.

I sleep. I dream I'm in another country, or in another world. Everything is the same as back home, but I don't know anyone, and they're speaking a language I don't understand. I ask to go home but no one knows what "home" means. Then even I can't understand what I'm saying, I'm talking but the syllables don't make any sense. And then I lose my voice completely.

-/-/-/-

**Akito**

I'm sick the rest of the weekend. My head feels like it's in a pot of boiling water and the rest of my body has turned to ice. Saturday I literally do nothing but sleep. Sunday I eat all the cereal in the apartment, then go back to sleep again. When I sleep I dream I'm awake. I hear music, coming from nowhere, sometimes beautiful, sometimes horrible, constantly changing, a million different imaginary instruments. I know I'm awake when the music stops. The entire difference between awake and asleep is music.

When the weekend is over, I'm not convinced all of Friday hasn't been a fever dream, too.

I skip school on Monday. I'm not sick anymore, but I'm tired. Sleep has become work, and the more I do it the more exhausted I become. So I make myself wake up, get out of the house. The city library has a good selection, and I pick up fifteen books – seven non-fiction, eight novels. Not classic novels, either. New releases, things with interesting summaries on the back, dusty ones that looked lonely, even violating the age-old adage and choosing ones with eye-catching covers.

Whatever mysterious, potentially fatal disease I've acquired, it's put me in a whimsical mood. As I'm walking back, the bag of books heavy in my hand, I see a store selling antiques. I go inside. It smells like dust and wood-polish. I pick up a few things, feeling their textures and weight, old paper and leather and pottery and fabric. They all have an aura of fragility to them, but the fact that these have belonged to other people, been parts of lives and homes, survived to this time in safety, is reassuring. Even ancient germs, from the breath and hands of all the strangers these objects have been exposed to, seem powerless against all the history.

There's a few tables of things that seem much too new to qualify as antiques. Pikachu figures, toy guns with foam bullets, a remote control that doesn't seem to go with anything, stuffed animals that make noises when squeezed, their mass-produced mechanically-stitched seams still intact. There's a small box of used crayons. It makes me think about who would bring in such a thing, were they surprised when it was taken off their hands and replaced with maybe a few pennies, or did they expect it, feel perfectly entitled to sell their barely-old, half-gone crayons? And the set-up has them so proudly displayed, does the shopkeeper really expect someone to buy them? _Will _someone buy them?

I'm smiling like a fool, just the thought of these things is very entertaining. There's a camera on the same table, one of the kind that still uses film and prints the photos out as soon as they're taken, to watch the gray ghosts solidify to real colours right in your hand. I buy the camera. It's five dollars.

At the grocery store, I buy a loaf of bread, a bag of spinach and a jar of lemon juice, for some reason feeling like these are the exact things it is important to own. I forget to replace the cereal.

Back at my apartment, I start reading one of the books. It is a non-fiction book, and it is about space. It talks about reactions inside stars, the gases they burn, turning matter into energy to keep existing, numbers of temperatures and of lifespans that are too big to mean anything but a sense of abstract awe. Heat and pressure turning carbon into diamonds, gravity pulling them into the center of the star. Diamonds falling like rain from all directions. I read two-hundred fifty-three pages. Then someone knocks on my door.

When I open it, Tohru is there, in her sunglasses and black dress, her dog beside her looking noble and poised. She smiles at me (Tohru, not the dog). "Akito! Hi, can I come in?"

"Of course," I say. I hastily try to tidy up as discretely as I can. Mostly this involves pushing empty bags out of view and putting stuff in piles. I lead her to sit down on my (unmade. Maybe that gives it a sort of charm?) bed, because the kitchen side of the room is worse. "Did you come here on your own?"

"With Chella," she says.

"Who?"

"Oh! My dog," she laughs. Then she says, "You're not allergic, are you?"

"No. I'm not allergic to anything."

"Okay, good. I forgot to find out. I'm so thankful you're not."

Chella is stretching on the floor by our feet. I say, "Can I pet Chella?" then remember hearing somewhere that you're not supposed to pet seeing-eye dogs.

But Tohru says, "Go ahead," and I do. Chella's fur is short and smooth, and she makes appreciative sounds. She looks at me with dark shining eyes and I'm sure she smiles (actually the dog this time).

"So, how did you know how to get here?" I ask Tohru.

"I talked to your friends. They were also worried about why you didn't come to school today, but when I asked if they wanted to come with, they said they didn't think they should."

A noncommittal noise buzzes through my closed lips.

I can feel her eyes moving over me. "Are you okay?

"I was sick. I had a fever, and I couldn't get out of bed all weekend. And today... I'm still kind of sick, I think. I don't know how long I've been sick for. You might want to go, so you don't catch it."

"If you're sick, I still want to be here with you. I want to help you get better. That reminds me." She turns around and takes off the backpack she's been wearing this whole time. She withdraws a grocery bag and hands it to me. "I brought you fruit."

"So you did," I say, looking in the bag to see a bunch of bananas, a container of raspberries, some peaches, plums and pears, and a single grapefruit.

"It's kind of a random gift, isn't it? My grandpa and I both went shopping and we didn't know each other were going, so there ended up being way too much for us to eat and I thought you might like some, because most people like fruit, I think..." She trails off and her face goes red. "I'm talking too much."

"No, it's fine. And thank you. This is – it's a really good gift. I personally fail at grocery shopping, so this is perfect." She laughs. I say, "Seriously, I'm amazingly bad at buying food. I spend all my money on lemon juice and I don't get anything to use it on, that kind of thing." This makes her laugh even more. "I guess it is kind of funny... now I'm talking too much, aren't I?"

"I like how you talk."

Is she flirting with me? She likes me, right? After what happened at the party, she must return my feelings to some degree, and her coming here, it has to mean something. Doesn't it?

I say, "About what happened on Friday. I'm sorry-"

She gently presses a finger to my lips and I go quiet. "Don't be."

"Okay."

"So much happened that day. A lot of it was confusing, and strange, and complicated, and some of it was bad. But what we had, what happened between us, that wasn't any of those things. I look back on it and I can remember exactly how it felt, and it makes me so happy." She touches my arm. Wherever she touches me feels instantly more alive, more _me _than it ever was before. She awakens me. "I really like you. And I think we could have something, again."

Is this real? I feel like I'm dreaming, but I know this is real. I can feel her tracing patterns on my arm. I can feel so many things. "I'd like that."

"But," she says, "I think I have to know more about you."

"Ask me anything," I say, and I mean it.

She folds her legs up on the bed with her. It looks like she's meditating, so concentrated. "Ummm. What's your favorite colour."

"Black. Yours?"

"That's hard. Either red of really bright purple."

"You put a lot of thought into that."

"It's the kind of thing I think about. Your turn to ask me."

"What's your favorite food?"

"Okay, you're going to think this is really weird, but eel."

"It's not weird. I've had eel before. It's really good."

"Glad my answer didn't scare you away. What's yours?"

"Bread. The white kind that's supposed to be bad for you. It doesn't even have to have anything on it, I like the taste."

We talk for a long time, but it doesn't feel like a long time. I find out her favorite musician is a pop singer from the nineties who never quite caught on but wrote very sincere ballads about everything that caught his interest, from love to historical occurrences to the tree in his backyard.

Her favorite time is sunset in late-summer, her favorite plants are lilacs, rock (my questions were so creative): quartz, mode of transportation: walking, favorite age: seventeen (right now), movie: a Japanese one she saw as a child that she doesn't remember the name of (she thinks it involved a samurai whose fiancé was turned into a butterfly, and he wanders through a forest filled with spirits searching for a spell to turn her back into a human, and at the end, although he doesn't find this spell, a forest god repays a favour to the couple when they rescue him from hunters, and he makes an offer to turn the samurai also into a butterfly which the samurai accepts, and he and his wife fly away together to explore the world.

Although Tohru says it's entirely possible her memory and imagination distorted the film completely from what it actually was, or that the whole movie is entirely made-up), she doesn't have a favorite city because she's seen so many of them and has loved them all.

My answers, respectively: a female pianist and singer-songwriter, midnight, evergreen trees, "Umm... I guess sandstone" ("Haha, how can you not know, it was your question!" "Yeah, but it's not something I've really thought about because I never expected anyone to ask me something like that."), walking (something in common, finally!), really young like five or six, it's been so long since I've seen a movie that I can't think of one ("Really? I have some good ones on my computer, we can watch them when we get a chance!"), Vancouver, even though I've never been there, but from what I've heard ("Oh, Vancouver's so nice, you should definitely go sometime!").

Conclusion: we are different. We are very different. Not just as different as night and day, more like as different as night and... pie.

At least, that's the conclusion I arrive at. Maybe Tohru's is entirely different, because once we run out of words, she leans in and kisses my cheek. Right up close, I can see through her sunglasses. There are flecks of lightness in her eyes, shining like... well, stars. Billion degree stars full of diamonds and life.

She smiles. "I should get home now. I'll see you at school tomorrow?"

"Definitely."

-/-/-/-

The next morning, before school, I look at myself in the mirror and wonder if I'm deceiving her. If I'm deceiving me. How do I expect this to work, exactly? I can't let myself think I can be close to her without letting her know who/what I am. But how am I supposed to bring something like that up, anyway? _Hi, by the way, did I mention I'm a girl? So, um, swing that way? I thought our relationship might have some kind of future, but if you're not into that kind of thing, I understand completely..._

I try to cut off that train of thought, but my head is still spinning with questions.

The weird thing is, I honestly didn't think about these things yesterday, at all. They didn't seem important. But now they're mixed into everything I feel. Yesterday I was just me. Now there are words for what I am, and they're words that make listeners flinch, that stick like oil on my tongue after I've said them, that are treated as somehow more obscene that any swear I can think of. And worst of all is that I know it's not the words that bother anyone, it's the ideas behind them.

After a brief internal debate, I pick up my backpack, open and close the door, and turn to face my life.


	8. VIII: Looking For Nothing

Thank you dishrag-chan, loritakitochan, StrawberryAkito, and MissMarientose.

Aimee Mann song.

**Deconstruction  
VIII: Looking For Nothing**

-/-/-/-

**Tohru**

When I was fourteen, on some unnamed island, I felt the earth shake beneath my feet.

It was a bright day, but they were nearly all bright days on this coast, rock and sand and mossy-soft plants soaked in white sunbeams. The sparkling, sparking water that constantly swayed under the boat that took us here cast mineral-scented wind over the land, its coolness welcome against the heat of my day-old sunburn. Coarse sand shifted under my feet as I walked.

During this time, I could always feel the ocean on me. The salt that collected in my hair never seemed to quite wash out, bumpy grains stiffening each humidity-bent strand into riotous unstraightness, so that if I ran my fingers the wrong way over one it would resist like the fibrous seeds of impossibly-shaped weeds. It changed the feel of my skin, too, so that at first it didn't feel like me anymore, but when I returned months later to living in an on-shore house it took me at least as long to get used to the saltlessness.

Mom had gone to ask for directions to the next island, where she had an appointment. I walked with no destination in mind, exploring the area but careful not to go far. I didn't need to. My foot touched something and I picked up the familiarly strange lightness of driftwood and ran the nail of my index finger along its pathways.

It was still in my hands when the earthquake started. There were sounds, waves breaking, water splashing. Something fell with an earthy thud. I almost lost my balance. Sand scattered over my feet. And then it was over.

I don't have words for what I felt. Maybe that's why I remember it so clearly; not like it was yesterday, but like it's happening right now. It seemed to shatter something inside or around me, like a dam holding me back had been unceremoniously, irreversibly broken, and now I was falling, flowing towards... _something. _Some place I hadn't known existed.

The world was changing. It was beyond my control, but I was part of it.

It was small, as far as earthquakes go, but the fact that it had _been _was enough.

The next time I had that feeling, it was October the next year. I was sitting on the plasticized seat of a bus, one of my arms resting by the window, feeling the cold of the metal through my sleeve. There was no one beside me, but this wasn't particularly conspicuous as there were hardly ever many people on this bus, one of the few designated for vision-impaired high school and junior high students in the city. An old, smoky scent lingered in the air, along with a not-bad-but-not-good-either smell that reminded me of shoes.

The vehicle shuddered to a stop and the doors slid open with a gust and a mechanical beep. Footsteps as someone got on, walked past me with a shadow and a rustling displacement of air. The doors creaked/clicked/shook shut.

The engine rumbled, got louder then quieter but never stopped sounding like a large, woken-up animal. The bus felt like it was rising and falling. The driver cursed under his breath. Something tapped on glass and it had the blunted, echo-y sense of coming from outside.

The doors opened again. "I need to get on." The voice was a low, ambiguous monotone.

The driver's voice was much deeper, like it was coming through a tunnel. "This bus is for vision-disabled students."

"I'm a student."

"_Vision_-disabled students."

"Yeah. I'm that, too."

"Can I see some proof?"

"I don't carry around (curse word) doctors' reports with me."

I shouldn't have been listening. But they were loud. The formerly monotone voice had risen in anger and was now obviously female and probably teenaged. I turned my head away from her, towards the window, breathed out on the whorls obscuring outside. I drew shapes in the fog. Circles. Squares. Triangles. I wasn't an artist but I wanted to make something. The bus driver said, "Can you take off your sunglasses?"

"I can. But I won't."

"You're not getting on this bus."

"I know." The voice slowed down, becoming more sad than angry. "You decided that a long time ago."

And then I knew who she was. Sort of. She had sat beside me in English class, once. She wasn't supposed to be in my English class.

It was at one of my old schools, back from before the boat trip, when I lived in Saskatchewan, now seeming more like a dream or a movie of someone else's life. The school had both elementary and junior high classes in the same building, but socially it was segregated. One talked only to people in the same grade, of the same gender and popularity level. There were no official rules against doing otherwise, but there didn't need to be. It simply wasn't done.

I was in grade five. She was one of the junior high students. There was a guest speaker that day in my English class, an author reading from her book about emigrating from Poland as a child. The author had a crackling voice, and as she walked past me she smelled like vegetable soup.

She used many 'o' sounds in her writing, both hard and soft, but I wasn't sure if she used more of those sounds than was usual or if it was the way she said them that made them stand out. She pronounced every vowel with great care, like she was making a conscious effort.

I wanted to tell her that she was doing a wonderful job of it and didn't need to try so hard. I wanted to tell her that my mom sometimes worried about her English because she worked check-out and talked to customers all day and sometimes she thought they couldn't understand her and one time when a customer was walking away she heard him say "Tank yoo vely mush," to his girlfriend who laughed and my mom only mentioned this happening the one time but the way she said it, like it wasn't a big deal, makes me think it happened before, who knows how many times, and I know it must have bothered her because otherwise she wouldn't have mentioned it, and if you listen, my mom isn't hard to understand at all and her way of saying words is actually really beautiful, she learned a lot of her English from songs so all her sentences have bits of music in them.

But I don't know how to say things like that, if there even is a way to say them.

The guest speaker spoke quietly and I leaned forward in my desk to get closer to her words.

About twenty minutes into the reading someone whispered at the girl beside me, the one whose clothes were outer-space shadows and whose hair stood up like a storm cloud or a black halo and whose body too big for the desk she was sitting in, legs stretched out far in front of her and arms dangling nearly to the floor, who was all angles and mystery darkness, "I don't think you're in this class."

"Yes I am," said the older girl. "I'm right here." She sounded like she was smiling. The other student said nothing, so she elaborated, "If you can see me in the room right now, I'm obviously here, in this class."

"I meant..." said the younger student, "I don't think you're supposed to be here."

"Oh. Well, that's a different matter entirely. It gets complicated though, bogging down all into fate and what's meant to be and what's written in the stars. But you're probably right, yeah. I'm certainly not allowed to be here." She stayed seated.

When the bell rang she stood up, tapping her white can on the floor as she crossed the room. "I realized about five minutes in I had the wrong place," she said to me, or maybe to the space I just happened to be filling as I went to get my lunch box. "But I wanted to hear the rest of the story."

She was gone before I could think of anything to say to that. I didn't run into her again in all my time at that school. I vaguely recall something about her transferring, but I don't know how I would know this as I never knew her name, so most likely I made it up and my mind blended it in with the facts.

In this instant, somehow, I knew for certain this was her. The doors started to close again.

"I have to get off here," I told the driver. The doors rattled to a halt. "I just remembered something."

I stepped out onto the pavement. With a thud and a screech wheels spun the bus and its windows away, its back spilling warm warm dizzying bursts of carbon monoxide.

It was the time and the type of day when the cold needles at all exposed skin until it goes numb and feels almost warm again, and all covered skin becomes cold in contrast. Where there is no snow, but sometimes I can feel packed ice with pebbles sticking out of it through the soles of my shoes. The coldness stops all smells except the blank smell of itself, which is more of an acute tiredness far back in my throat and nose. Everything was amber-tinted and what I think of as sharp-edged. Red was the clearest colour. She had red shoes or shoelaces or designs at the bottom of her pants or a red leaf at her feet.

"I wasn't lying," she said. "I actually am blind." Her sunglasses were very big and very black.

"I know," I said.

She was tapping her cane on the pavement like she was making music. It sounded good, too. "Does he think I just carry this thing around as a fashion statement?"

"Maybe it was because he didn't recognize you."

"Now I've missed the regular bus. Damn."

"You should report him."

"Probably simpler not to. I dunno. I have issues with authority."

"Do you have a ride?"

"Nope. Looks like I'm gonna miss another day of high school."

"That's great! I mean, not great that you're going to miss, or about what the driver did, that was definitely not great, but we're right by my house and my mom can drive us... if you want." Come to think of it, she hadn't sounded particularly disappointed by the prospect of missing class.

"Seriously? Yeah, that would be awesome. Great." I could sense her smiling at me, and it made me feel helpless. That didn't make sense. I had caused her to smile, it had been our conversation, right? Why was I...?

That feeling again, over and around and through me.

"My name's S, by the way."

I wasn't sure I'd heard her right, but I said, "I'm Tohru."

"Cool."

Mom had been painting. I could tell because when she answered the door she was wearing the faded white of the old clothes she always wore when she painted. There were fragments of a million colours streaked and spilled and speckled on the white.

She had started painting about a month ago. It was one of many things she was trying lately. Before this, she had learned a few songs on the keyboard, bought a fancy computer she couldn't figure out how to use, and written the first two-and-a-half chapters of an autobiography/essay/novel (it jumped between genres and thoughts and languages, frantic and incomprehensible to anyone who wasn't her, and maybe to her as well because she quickly shelved the project).

I love her so much, my mom.

(A few weeks after she died, I tried again to read her book. I pressed my face right up to the screen of her fancy computer and I stared at the words, reordering, translating, studying, sounding out. I never made any changes to the document. I printed out the thirty-four undecipherable sheets and put them into a photo album, between the pages like pressed flowers so they wouldn't bend.)

She drove S – that was how she introduced herself to my mom, too, so maybe it really was her name - and I to our respective schools. I was in my last year of junior high and S in her second year of high school. She sat up front beside Mom while I sat in the back behind her stormy hair. Mom said the same thing to S as I had, about reporting the driver, and S offered the same reply.

Even with S shaking it off, I think Mom went ahead and called the bus service, because the next day he was gone, and the day after that, and all the days I've taken the bus yet.

"Thanks for the ride. See ya around, Tohru." I listened to the sound of S's cane against the pavement as she walked away.

"_She seems like a good person," _said my Mom in Japanese as we continued driving.

"_Yes," _I said. _"I'm glad I met her."_

My mom's paintings are amazing. I know very little about the technical aspects of painting, and what makes an artwork good or not, but when I saw what she made I always wanted to lean in close to it so that my eyelashes almost brushed against the swirls in the texture, and the tiny details made each canvass like its own gigantic world, and I got a feeling like I was standing in front of the ocean, and even stepping away from them, so that the colours all melted into one, it would be a colour so unstoppably beautiful I would have to remind myself to breathe.

At school that day I couldn't concentrate, at least not on the lesson. Pluses and minuses and division and multiplication signs and cosines and tangents and hypotenuses washed into background noise. Something was unfolding and I had to write it. Social class was the same. The revolutions left vague, yearless shadows as they happened over and over again, or they were vibrant, feeling-filled ethereal abstracts and currents in the river of words passing through me, that I tried to hold on to long enough to write, to spell out what I _had_ to say but that was so surprisingly difficult to put into any language I knew.

This was something I hadn't done in years, writing screenplays, but now the scenes were playing so clearly in my head. I could _hear _the dialogue, feel and see the colours flickering across the scene in my mind. I couldn't keep it in. Old stories came back and dozens of new ones played out, each thought leading to another, branching out into something too complicated for me to have possibly come up with. My grade point average dropped by fifteen percent that semester. I worked on a dozen or so scripts, all different lengths. Short films and epics. None finished. Some were just a few scenes from complete, but those last scenes had to be more perfect than I could find ways to make them. Others are endings with no beginning.

Making them, thinking up characters and places and plots and words, I found something I hadn't known I was looking for.

-/-/-/-

**Akito**

A flash in the corner of my vision as something glides onto my desk with a sound like fall leaves. Seconds ago, the bell jarred us to our feet to crowd the door and try to trickle through, but I know which face in the cloud/crowd belongs to the person who passed me by, leaving me with words and paper and a swish of air and the beginnings of a headache.

"_Yuki." _The calligraphy at the top of each page confirms it. I pause. There's no surname. This could mean anything.

I ask to sit out in athletic advancement. Ms Shiraki glances at me and nods. I dangle my legs over the stage and try to read my non-fiction book while the footsteps of basketball players pound through the room. I reread each line trying to make sense of it, and this makes the writing seem familiar, like platitudes, more syllables than thoughts.

At one point Yuki sits down beside me. I look at him. He looks at me. I realize he can see me looking at him and I look away. I look up a few minutes later and he's looking at me again. He steers his pupils to the other side of the room. Some team scores a basket and he jumps down and runs off to the sound of cheers.

I fill my head with stars, stars, stars.

-/-/-/-

I try to tell her. Really, I do. I know I can do it, I just... don't. It shouldn't be any harder than when I came out to Hatori, forcing words out of a throat that didn't feel capable of making a single sound.

But Kyo is beside her and she looks so happy and calm as she eats her sandwich. And she smiles at me. I think the smile is what does it. I don't want her to stop smiling.

And when she asks me if I'm okay I say "yeah" so quickly I don't even convince myself, and I spend the remainder of the half-hour trying to make it look true.

-/-/-/-

There's a chase. I almost fall over with the shift of the weight of my backpack as someone slams against me in the hall. I stayed late today, checking with my chemistry teacher that the notes Yuki gave me were accurate (they were, to my annoyance). When I got down from the third to the first floor where my locker is, I thought all the other students were already out of the building. Janitors pushed mops and brooms and carts through the halls and teachers were striding towards exits, jackets on and briefcases in hand.

Whoever went by is the first other student I've seen. His clothes swallow him, waving out behind like flags as he runs. He's tall, and has a way of keeping his legs far apart while running as though he intends to take up the maximum amount of space possible.

From a distance, I follow him out the door he sends shaking on its hinges.

I stay too far back, or just far enough. I'm not sure yet. When I emerge outside into the parking lot there's a different boy, lying on his side and smeared with dirt on the ground between the few remaining cars. His face is turned away from me but the shock of orange hair is unmistakable.

He moves. A stream of red drips down his face onto the pavement. I run up to him, stopping a few feet away. I shouldn't be here, or I should do something, but I'm stuck with a useless compromise.

He presses his palms to the ground. He's on his knees now, his feet bent in a way I try not to think about. With one jerk he turns his face towards me, a look in his eyes that I think physically hurts me. "You can't tell her about this!" he exclaims/demands/pleads.

He stands, favoring one leg, and keeps his eyes locked with mine. "I won't," I hear myself say.

He turns and starts walking.

-/-/-/-

Things get better, I think. Ignoring my old almost-could-have-been-friends, I eat lunch with Tohru and Kyo and we talk about things that make us laugh. Kyo doesn't pretend to like me, but he's not outwardly hostile. When Tohru isn't around, the two of us sit in silence with a gap between us for her to fill when she gets back. When she arrives the conversation always resumes, but Kyo and I are talking to her, not to each other. If she notices she doesn't comment on it.

Whatever happened that day in the parking lot, no one has mentioned it. I could pass it off as a nightmare if not for the excruciating seconds where Kyo and I catch each other's eye over her shoulder and go quiet.

-/-/-/-

Losing.

It's got nothing to do with my appearance. Well, maybe a bit, but in the sense of tracking progress, like how the mark on a test is just a number that signifies nothing until given context. If I saw the number ninety-four scrawled on a wall, I wouldn't think about it, considering the abundance of esoteric graffiti around the city. But in red ink, circled and followed by a percentage sign, those numbers adorning my paper convince me that I've done something right.

Mostly, really, it's about control. About overpowering everything, including my own physical instincts. Mind against body. Like a competition, only it never ends and there's no way to win. It's all me, in my head and my stomach. Alone. It's not so much that I like being in control. That would imply that I got something out of it.

It's a need. If I didn't do this, if I didn't try to always stay a bit hungry, to go as long as possible without giving in, if the number of minutes or hours (or days, it was, once upon a time when I had more willpower) between meals wasn't an unbreakable rule... I can't picture my life. Not at all.

Nothing can make me break my routine.

Except her. It's important that she sees me eat, that I seem just a little less screwed up for her. When I'm around her, I honestly feel like whatever's wrong with me stops for the moment. That somehow, whatever this is between us, it's enough for now.

I think I've gained a lot of weight this week, with all the unskipped lunches. I should be unhappy with myself, but I'm not. I just feel full.

-/-/-/-

Capture.

On Friday there's a heat wave and it's nice enough to go outside for lunch. Tohru, Kyo and I sit on the dying grass and talk about movies. He likes the action ones with subtitles. She likes ones I've never heard of but sound beautiful and eclectic. I don't know what I like.

I reach into my backpack and grasp what I need. Between my fingers the shapes feel right. I slip the loop around my wrist and pull the machine into the light. The colour of the scene changes slightly as I bring the viewer up to my eye, but the click as I depress the button and the way the machine trembles in my hand as it scrolls out a replica of now are perfect.

Whatever they're hiding behind their smiles, in this snapshot they are happy. Friends with the edge of my thumb in the corner of the frame. Tensions unraveled, no questions, only a millisecond of not-thinking-just-laughing. Eyes crinkled, mouths stretched, arms free, hair like streams of light, unbreakable.

I know nothing about saving the world. All I want to save is this. Because for once I've forgotten to be cold or hungry or confused, and I'm so awake I can't imagine being able to fall asleep ever again.

-/-/-/-

**Hatori**

It felt strange being back at the hospital in the town I'd grown up in. My footsteps seemed too loud. I looked down at my shoes. Too shiny. My strides were too long. Everything seemed to have shrunk since the last time I was here, although I'd been in my mid-teens at the time, visiting my grandfather who'd had a stroke, and I can't have grown that much since then.

I'd been in the building in the time between then and now, of course I had, in my studying, but those weren't the same hallways, subtle differences in white noise and lighting changing them completely. Here the lights made my head heavy, stinging behind my eyes, and it was always uncomfortably quiet until single sounds shattered that and made my skin go icy before they cut off abruptly or slowly and hopelessly faded into oblivion. Patients talking in sleep. Whirring machines. Beeping machines. Nurses offering reassurance. Moans. Labored breathing. Dry gasps. Mumbled hallucinations. Pleading. Half-audible imagined conversations.

The rubber soles of my work shoes clip against the white tiles. Kana had asked to come with, and this was the one time I refused her something. She wasn't ready for this. I wasn't ready for this, but it was something I had to do. To my surprise, Kana responded to my refusal with an 'okay' and an adjustment of her lips that was neither a frown nor a smile. The brightness of her eyes broke something inside me. I wanted to close the distance between us, feel my mouth on hers and take away her worries.

But it wasn't the time so we said our goodbyes and I opened the car door and stepped out. We'd have a nice dinner tonight. Go out to a restaurant. Find something good in the town we'd spent so many years in. This I promised myself.

Ren's head was propped up on a pillow, dark hair pooled around her, and under the papery sheets her body thin and twisted like a discarded doll. I thought she was asleep, but her eyes opened halfway when I walked in and the black-spot pupils followed me as I took my seat at the edge of her bed. "Hello, Ren."

She rasped inaudibly.

"I'm sor-"

She cut me off. "Why are you here?" Her voice was like a rusted hinge.

"I came to see you."

"Why?"

"I wanted to know how you were doing."

"Garbage."

To this day I'm not sure whether that was a dismissal of my motives or a description of her state. I said, "Would you like anything?"

"Did she send you?"

"Who?"

"My daughter."

"I came because I heard what had happened. She was the one who found you. Did you know that?"

She avoids my question again. The darkness of her eyes turns away from me towards the wall. There's a lot of dark on her makeup-free face, black gathered around her eyes like two unending holes. Several minutes pass. She adjusts the position of her head, shifting torrents of hair, then looks at me as though noticing me for the first time. "You're her friend."

"Yes."

"And her cousin."

"Yes."

"You're her cousin and her friend."

"Yes."

"That's good." She looks at one of her hands. The blunt shortness of her nails makes me think the hospital staff cut them for her. Shreds of red polish cling to their bases. Her arms are covered by furious scratches, deep and shallow, red, white or scabbed purple, some hidden by bandages. Her fingertips are splitting. I try not to think about how that would feel. It scares me more than it should, that one detail. The things age does, how not even trained medical professionals can stop her body from malfunctioning in some small way, like her determination to break herself is hardwired into her cells. Her rusted voice said, "It's my fault she's like this."

"Like what?" The tactless words were out of my mouth before I could stop them.

"...Wrong." I'm not sure if there were any words before that one.

"Akito's a strong girl."

"I messed her up."

"Are you going to get treatment?"

"Let them inside my head..." Her face twisted into what might have been a smile. "Not somewhere anyone wants to be." She exhaled. "Not even me."

Her hand shot out and grabbed my arm. I think I gasped. I said, "Are you alright?"

"No."

"You're hurting me."

Her grip loosened. "Everyone leaves me." She twirled a piece of hair around the finger of her free hand. "He left me." She held the strand out in front of her, ran it between her thumb and index finger, stretching her arm towards the ceiling. "She left me." The hair glittered like the string of a musical instrument. In this light, it was impossible to tell what colour it was. She abruptly let her hand fall, as though all her muscles had suddenly given out. "Am I really so horrible to be around?"

She released my arm.

I tried to adjust the blankets to make her more comfortable. "Akira passed on. It's tragic, but there's nothing you could have done to stop it."

Her wrists frightened me. The bones in them were too thin, like they could snap at any moment from the strain of being part of her. I was going to be a doctor. It wasn't right for the human body to bother me.

"It's not right for a husband and wife to be apart so long," she said. "I don't understand. Why couldn't I join him?"

"Maybe you're meant to live."

She stared at me the same way she had at the wall. "What for?"

"I think that's something you have to find for yourself."

When I left the room, it still didn't seem like I was the right size for the hallway. I felt both enormous and powerless. Walking back to the car, I realized how much my arm hurt. I examined it to find five spots darkening to blue. I stuck my hands in my pockets, feeling teenaged.

What did I have to do to become adult?

Kana told me later that when I came back the first things I said to her were in Japanese. We always spoke English; in fact, I had barely spoken the language since I left the town, except on an occasional phone call to a family member, or to order food at the market. I wouldn't call myself fluent in the language, but I can communicate what I want relatively clearly, and most family members would be familiar with the idiosyncrasies of my dialect. I can't imagine myself speaking the language without noticing, since finding the right word takes a great deal of energy. But the meeting had been draining, and I can remember talking to Ren in Japanese.

I also remember talking to her in English. Two contradicting memories, both unforgivingly clear. Logically, what really happened was most likely something in between – all the phrases that came to mind, stitched together like a rope of threadbare scraps and tossed up in the air as we tried to reach each other.

"Are you okay?" said Kana.

"I will be," I said.

At the restaurant, I tried not to think about the dangerous delicate, delicate dangerous people all around us or about how we were like them. We sat by the window and watched candlelight flicker in each other's eyes. We held hands under the table and I wouldn't let myself look at the waiter's hands as he brought us our meals.


	9. IX: Company

**A/N: **Hello all, welcome to chapter nine of Deconstruction and thank you for reading my story. I am sorry it's taken me so long to update - exams and personal life drama have been time consuming. A million thanks go out to my amazing reviewers, yellowis4happy, Decollage, and dishrag-chan. Chapter title is a song by An Horse. I have recently read over the previous chapters of this story, and there are some things I realize might have not been clear. I would like to address those now. I hope they don't contradict anything I've already written, but if they do, this is the new official continuity that the future chapters will be based on.

The part of the story told in present tense began in November of Akito's last year of high school, and it is currently early December. For flashbacks, Akito met Nikki near the start of grade nine, and the two broke up approximately three months later. Akito's mom kicked her out another few weeks after, and Akito went to go live with relatives. Akito first met Kana around this time, though only briefly. Hatori is three years ahead of Akito in terms of schooling, so in winter of the next year, when Akito was in grade ten, he and Kana were out of town on their first year of university. Ren sent Akito a video game as a Christmas present, although the two had not talked since Akito left, and Akito went by the house to see thank Ren and to see if she was okay. Ren had attempted suicide and Akito saved her life by calling an ambulance. Hatori and Kana came back to town to try and help the family. So much drama...

Chella is a Labrador retriever.

**Deconstruction**  
**IX: Company**

-/-/-/-

**Hatori:**

We were walking on ice when I first realized how deeply I loved her. I knew it before, of course – love grew in me like a starburst, so bright it burned, kept me warm and on the verge of exploding. I didn't know I could feel so strongly, it felt like I would overflow.

When I was apart from her, I didn't feel like a whole person. When she was sad, I was willing to do anything to take that feeling away from her. Her smile was like electricity going through me, or like an ocean wave surrounding me. I felt her happiness completely.

I loved her. I wanted to be with her forever. It was so clear. Why wasn't it that simple?

We walked on the frozen reservoir, laughing and slipping, helping each other stand. The ice was bluish white and thick and smooth, and old cracks in it had filled in with water-packed snow, fractures like giant spiderwebs. Everything sparkled, and in the spring sunlight crystalline chiming resounded, fragile ice crystals melting, dripping water _plink_ing all around.

We would run for short bursts, then leap, seeing how far we could slide. I felt like a kid, totally absorbed in the moment, our laughter loud and continuous; whenever one of us managed to catch our breath, the other would start laughing more than ever, and soon we'd both be caught up in it again. We stumbled over unexpected rough or smooth patches, cheered when we managed to get a particularly good run, tried to do tricks and failed spectacularly. Exams were over and we were ridiculous.

She took off running for a particularly long time, then started sliding the fastest either of us had gone yet – she just glided past, like she was on wheels. She gave a shout of joy, then a quick exclamation of surprise as she toppled backwards, flew for a moment, then hit the ice and continued to slide several meters, spinning in an awkward sitting position.

"Are you alright?" I called.

"Y-yeah," she said, looking around in confusion.

During the whole time, her expression had never changed: an odd look, too perplexed to panic even as she soared through the air. I couldn't help myself – I burst out laughing as I ran to help her get up. She was laughing too, and as she tried to stand our laughter shook us both and the two of us ended up flat on our backs.

The ice was cold but not unpleasantly so, and we spent a few minutes just like that, looking at the sky and the trees all around us, listening to the melting and the chirps of returning birds.

"It's becoming spring," she said.

"Mmhmm."

"It's beautiful."

"Yeah."

She turned onto her side, looked at me with eyes sparkling bright as the day.

"I love you," I said.

She pressed something warm into my palm. "I found this here."

I held the object out in front of me: a small grey stone. I brought it in closer to me, and it became bigger than the sun.

She reached out to touch it. "Turn it this way," she said, gently adjusting its position. "What does it look like to you?

"A heart."

"I thought so too."

I moved my fingertips over it. "It's kind of lumpy."

"That just makes it more anatomically correct."

I smiled. I tried to give it back to her, but she pushed it back into my hand, closed my fingers around it. "It's yours now."

-/-/-/-

Kana talked about G-d sometimes, but never religion. "I believe in what I can see and feel," she explained once. It was evening and we were walking through a city after touring the university. It was beautiful here, intricate towering architecture and cobbled roads. It was the kind of place where it was okay to talk about things like that, where it smells like rain and ash and earth, and the oversized alabaster moon was halfway up, and the moss and ferns were supersaturated green. It was the kind of place where one _has_ to talk about philosophy, with all that past and future around. Where the feeling of hard, old stone to stand on is as blissful as dreams of flying, where suddenly the world is so profound and yet clear, simply even, superconnected.

"Sometime I sense this freedom, or love, or G-d – in my mind they're all the same thing, I feel it brush up against me in the wind, or it will appear out of nowhere and surround me, and for a moment everything makes sense. I believe in that, that it means something." At the last sentence she suddenly looked away from me and up at the blue-purple sky, grew quieter.

In this city, I understood her perfectly. I kissed her and she kissed me back.

"Let's go to school here," I said when we eventually broke apart.

She laughed. "You liked the tour that much?"

"I like this city. I feel happy here."

"That's good. You deserve to be happy."

We still had a couple years to go at the school we were at, but then, once our areas of study became more specialized, we could go somewhere like this. We still had so much time to decide.

-/-/-/-

**Kagura:**

I remember the day I decided I was in love with Kyo. I was seven, in second grade, and having a bad day.

Carly, who was sometimes my friend and sometimes not, had decided we would bring in our Mogeta toys and challenge them. We had races and soccer games and monster-fighting competitions, and were about evenly matched and having quite a bit of fun when Trey B came over and asked what we were doing. We told him and he asked if he could play and Carly said no and I said yes and Carly said fine, but she wasn't going to let him use hers.

So I let Trey B use some of my Mogeta figures, even though I had mostly made them myself out of toy-dough or drawn them on cool-looking rocks using magic marker. Trey B kept making fun of them and told me they didn't look like Mogeta at all, why did I draw on rocks, that was lame and I felt myself get angry and I said do you want to play or not.

We had a few competitions but he wouldn't cooperate and then he said this is boring and I said can I have my figures back then and he said no and stuck them in his pockets. I tackled him and we rolled around on the grass and I managed to get my hand into his coat pocket and grab something, but he caught my arm with one hand and with the other he twisted my fingers open so that what I had, two toy-dough Mogetas, fell out. I reached for them but he pushed me and got to them first, and he laughed as he crushed them to pieces under his shoe.

I punched him in the face. He yelled at me and then started crying, and ran off to go tell a teacher. Then I started crying, sitting down on the grass and rocking back and forth with my knees to my chest and my head in my hands. I hadn't wanted to hurt him, I just got so angry that it flew out of me like some angry flying thing. Carly got up and walked away so I sat there alone. Trey B had left his jacket on the ground when he ran off so I found the stone Mogetas in his pocket and held them in my hands, trying to calm down by feeling their smoothness.

Hey, someone said. The voice was kind. I looked up to see a flash of orange hair.

H-hi, I said. It was hard to talk after crying so hard, and I didn't want him to see me like this. His name was Kyo, and he was in my class but we didn't talk very much. I was a good student mostly and he was always in trouble for getting into fights and talking back to teachers, and he spent a lot of time in the behavior corner.

Are you okay? he said.

Yes, I said, but started to cry again as I said it.

He sat down beside me. Do you... want anything?

Not really.

What happened?

T-Trey B broke my Mogetas, and then I... I-I hit him... in the face.

That's probably what I would have done too. Trey B is a jerk.

But it's wrong to hit...

But since you feel bad about doing it, that means you're a good person. It shows um depth of character. (From the way he says it, I can tell he's repeating something he's heard from an adult.)

I said, okay.

He said, do you feel any better now?

Yeah. Thanks.

No problem. I'm Kyo.

I know. I'm Kagura.

When the teacher came I had to go down to the principal's office. Behind me I could hear Kyo protesting that I didn't mean to do it and shouldn't get in trouble, Trey B started it.

The principal let me off with a warning and said if that happened again she'd call my parents, and I nodded solemnly and then the bell for the end of recess rang and she let me go to class.

The next day Kyo came up to my desk and put something small and orange on it. Here, he said. It's yours.

I picked it up and tried to figure out what it was.

It's your Mogeta – one of them that Trey B broke. I picked up the pieces and tried to glue them back – I don't think I found them all, and the other one was too broken to be fixed, and I'm not very good at gluing, so you can just throw it out if you want 'cause it kind of sucks.

I could see what it was now, where the ears and eyes were. Mogeta. It was cracked and had bits of dirt stuck to it, and it was missing a lot of pieces and very different from the original shape. It was had been painstakingly pieced together and probably took half an hour or more to do. It was amazing.

Thank you, I said, standing up and hugging him. He squirmed uncomfortably but I took a while to let go.

N-no problem, he said, and went back to his desk.

The classroom smelled like pencil shavings, the spicy scent of wood and graphite, and yellow light streamed in from a window in the corner, the figure on my desk casting a long shadow over a desk scarred with stars, hearts and initials.

-/-/-/-

**Akito:**

I wake up. The bare window is a glowing panel. I put my hand against the cold glass, frost like a series of fireworks, or a field in bloom, some of it crossing over to this side and disintegrating as I touch it.

Outside is white and light grey. Clean snow gleams in the sunlight, and shadows a colour I can't name fall from buildings, creating an intricate network below. Reflections stretch it out confusingly, and I take a moment to watch pedestrians trek through the white in their colourful hats and jackets.

I grab the camera off the table, where it was sitting atop a cushion of photos, piled on top of each other when I emptied them from my bag and pockets at the end of each day, too tired from school and work to sort through them. I snap one more, out the window, and add it to the mess. I'll see how it develops when I return.

Soon, in my work uniform and coat, I join the multitudes outside. Footsteps stir up heavy clumps of snow, still new enough that even the compressed snow on the sidewalk is overwhelmingly monochrome. It soaks through my shoes and socks but it's not that cold, and I have other things on my mind.

The sky is light blue with clouds tinted pink and yellow. In the slight chill, I'm aware of it all. The city feels gigantic.

"Where were you last weekend?" says the young-looking girl I work with, as behind the doors of the bubble-tea booth I hang up my coat and she pulls her red hair back into a ponytail and attempts to tame its frizzyness.

"Sick."

"Feeling better?"

"Yes. Thank you."

"You seem happy again. How's it going with that girl?"

"Well."

"So... deets?"

"No."

She smiles, braces flashing. "Oh well. At least you've lightened up a little bit."

Our other coworker comes in and becomes the focus of her attention as we set up the shop, and soon customers start materializing. But sometimes she looks up at me from the blender and grins or winks. I don't know how to respond to this, so I pretend I don't see, and try not to be too obvious as I look away.

Eight hour shift. It feels like I pressed fast-forward. I run on autopilot as I take orders and sort ingredients. My mind drifts. Plans.

Today I tell Tohru. There's no question about it. I'll say it casually, like she should have known it all along, like it's as damn obvious as it's supposed to be and if she didn't notice it's her own fault.

I hate that I let myself think like this. I don't want to hurt her. But... what other option is there? I want something real, whatever real is.

Is this how it's supposed to feel? A hailstorm of joy and pain, alternately battering me? Terrible, cliche, unsubtle lyrics I catch on the radio suddenly become real, become the things I can't put into words, paralyze me so that I can't change the station until I've listened to the whole song, feeling each word and note reverberating inside me.

Heart racing, mind blanking, flailing with no end in sight. I am falling too fast, too hard, and there is a reason it's called falling.

Also: I've mentally reverted to a twelve-year-old emo child.

"Two mango, please."

My head snaps up at the voice. "Hello, Daniel." Tohru isn't beside him this time, but – a furtive glance at the digital clock someone has hid under the counter confirms – it is only a few minutes before shift ends, and I'm scheduled to meet her right after.

"How've you been, man?"

"I'm well, you?"

"Good, good."

"Is Tohru here?"

"Don't worry, buddy, of course she is. Sitting down with your other friend, over there." I try to follow his gesture, but the sound of my name startles me.

"Akito!" the young-looking girl (what was her name? Did I ever know it?) says, her mock-severity nevertheless jarring. "Socializing during work hours?"

Head cast down, I get Daniel the drinks. "My shift ends in five minutes. I'll find you." He diffuses into the crowd and I turn to address the queue that's accumulated behind him.

I get through the next three customers by the time the clock beeps.

"Shift's over!" she says, pulling her apron over her head even though there's still four people in line for the blond guy to deal with. "And by the way," she says to me with an ambiguous smile as we go back to put stuff away, "my name's Marianne."

I wander the food court for a few minutes before I catch sight of Tohru, at a table with Daniel and... Britt? There's an empty spot between Tohru and Daniel, and they greet me as I take a seat. Britt gives a small wave.

"What are you doing here?" I say to her.

"Tohru invited me along."

"Oh. That's... nice," I lie. Except I'm not even sure it is a lie. Something hangs unfinished in the air between us, like the fragments of mall conversations scattered through the room, white noise that seems to close in if I try to pick out words in it. In the next few weeks, this place is only going to get busier.

"How are you?" says Britt.

"Fine. You?"

"Same."

To Tohru, I say, "So what are we doing?"

She smiles. She's wearing her sunglasses again, black dress and coat and leggings and boots and belt, with a pink scarf. The single bright colour is almost hypnotic. "We're meeting Caylee and Ritsu at the department store, then going to Flamingoes, then... I don't know. We'll find something. Is that okay with you?"

"Sure. What's Flamingoes?"

"It's a record shop. It's wonderful there, I love it."

Britt says something too quietly for me to hear.

"Sorry, what was that?" says Daniel.

"Yuki – one of my friends – his brother owns the store." She looks up at me... apologetically? then quickly turns her eyes back to the plate of food in front of her.

"That should be interesting?" Daniel nods.

I find it difficult to concentrate on the discussion. I hear the words but they pass right through me, and all I can think is how to fit my confession in between them. Daniel is calm, Britt is uncomfortable, Tohru is nice, but I knew all this before and everything else gets lost in the ether. I feel like a ghost, silent and distant and barely there, powerless and untouchable, a kind of frantic energy.

"How much do you think people can change?" I hear Tohru say, and my interest picks up enough that I click out self-pity mode. Due to the reactions her question gets, I'm guessing everyone else is intrigued, too.

Simultaneously and respectively, Daniel and Britt answer "Completely" and "They don't".

"You go first," says Daniel.

"It's just..." says Britt, "they can learn to act different, but their basic essence is the same. You can't change that."

Daniel says, "But what about experiences? Do you think if you'd grown up a hundred years ago, on the other side of the planet, you'd still be the same?"

"Yup."

"And over the next thirty years, you think you won't change?"

"Not in any significant way."

Daniel scratches his goatee. "I disagree, man. I've had friends who like, a year or a month or a day after I last saw them, were totally different people."

"Flying Pot-kun. "

Did I say that out loud? Everyone is looking at me, so I must have.

This is as good a way as any to out myself, and I'll regret it if I don't tell this story, if I let myself forget that time. With their eyes on my, I jump into the memory, like plunging off a diving board. "I used to know this guy..."

-/-/-/-

A voice behind me shouted in rapid-fire Japanese, echoing down the street.

The midwinter sunlight leaked dully over the frozen fields and suburban houses, and the cold slipped between the folds of my clothes. Melted snow sloshed through the holes in my shoes, numbing my toes completely. Salt and pavement had eaten through the bottoms of my jeans. A few grey strings from the damaged fabric dragged wetly behind me.

The voice came again. "Hey!" I heard running, footsteps scattering gravel, increasing in volume as they drew nearer.

Someone touched my arm and I spun around. "_What?"_

The person standing before me was a boy, about my age – he looked a lot like me, actually. Short kind-of-messy black hair, tall, Asian. His clothes were better than mine, even though we both wore jeans and hoodies.

His grin was wide, almost aggressive. "Why didn't you respond?"

"I didn't think you were talking to me."

He looked up and down the empty street. "Who else would I be talking to?"

"Someone you knew. Someone who spoke Japanese." I resumed walking.

"You don't?" He caught up and fell into step beside me.

"No."

"Why not?"

"I have no reason to."

"But languages are fun! I met my girlfriend at Japanese class." There was nothing aggressive about him anymore, and I wondered if I had imagined it before. He was just excessively energetic.

I increased my pace. So did he. "Why are you talking to me?" I said.

"I thought you were someone I knew."

"I'm not."

"You are now."

"No."

"Are you sure?" He looked at the fields. I tried to follow his eyes, but there was nothing there, just more dead plants embedded in ice. He looked at me again and I avoided his gaze. His eyes were intense; it felt weird to look at them. He snapped his fingers. "Got it! Akito Sohma, class ten-b!"

I wheeled to face him. "What are you, some kind of stalker?"

"Nope. Just observant. I'm on the student council – it's my duty to know those I govern. Where are you going?"

"My aunt and uncle's house," I said, knowing avoiding his questions would only prolong our conversation.

"Visiting?"

"I live there."

"Are you aunt and uncle Naomi and Richard Tanaka-Sohma?"

"Yes."

"Awesome, I know them! Their daughter babysat me as a kid. You look kinda like her." I don't say anything to that, so he continues, "Didn't you wear her kimono to school once? Yeah, you did! You looked so pretty, why don't you dress like that more often?"

"It's not me."

"Okay." He nods. "Yeah, I can understand what that feels like." He looks at his watch. "Oops, I gotta go. See you, Akito Sohma!" He takes off running, then suddenly turns around. "Oh, by the way! My name is Flying Pot-kun. See you at school tomorrow!"

"What kind of name is that?"

"That," he said, turning again, "you will come to learn in time."

I did see him the next day at school. As students passed through the hallway from class to class, shuffled like cards, he was there. His face was different – eyes focused straight ahead, a determined frown, everything hardened. Now I knew I hadn't imagined the intensity yesterday.

I walked right in front of him, and he didn't even react.

The next day and the day after were the same. I would go out of my way to get close to him, and he'd look at me like I was air. I was growing increasingly annoyed with both him and myself – him for being fake, myself for not making sense. Why did I want his attention now, after I spent our first encounter trying to get rid of it?

I decided it was because I didn't like being confused. I _needed _to know what was going on. And honestly, that was at least part of the reason. Now I can admit that the other, and possibly more influential, reason had something to do with him being the first person to really try to talk to me since starting high school. Since Nikki.

I spent my spare time studying. I didn't know anyone at this school. Nikki and her friends all went to public school, and some had already dropped out. They were less 'academically oriented' as the euphemism goes. They honestly just didn't care, and anyway, most of them were even poorer than my household.

Education was a big deal to my aunt and uncle, and they had sent both their children to this school as well. Their – my? – family was definitely one of the poorest ones here, and the cost of enrollment meant an economical approach to food and clothing. Rice and hand-me-downs. This was better than what I'd grown up with; that wasn't the issue. I didn't want these people who hardly knew me cutting back so much to send me to a good school, especially when I was so clueless as to what I was going to do with that education. University, a job?

I couldn't think of anyone like me who'd been successful. I couldn't really think of anyone like me period. As Nikki's dumping me had shown, my differentness made respectable people, like her parents, uncomfortable. Although they'd been kind to me, and I couldn't stop wondering how much they knew –

No. If I kept thinking this way, I'd screw up my emotions more than they already were. Better to just forget and fall into routine again.

It was Friday when he finally talked to me. I'd spent the morning debating whether I'd actually try saying something to him, and concluded I wouldn't – I didn't want anyone in the halls to hear me saying "Flying Pot-kun".

"Hey, Akito!" he called to me as I was transferring books between my locker and backpack. It was lunch hour.

"Oh. Hi." I said. I was going for cold and minimalist, but I'm sure it came off fake.

"Wanna eat lunch together?" He grinned. He was waving.

"All right." I said.

I never really did eat lunch, but I brought my lunchbox everyday, so I grabbed that.

My aunt and uncle worried that I wasn't eating enough. They wouldn't have understood if I tried to explain to them that I didn't need much food – I was a studying machine. I went to school, came home, and locked myself in my room with assignments and textbooks. I wasn't doing anything physical, so I didn't require much fuel. If I ate any more than I already did, it would just be a waste, and they'd have even less than they did now.

But it was easier to pretend than explain. My 'explanation' didn't even entirely convince me, considering how I felt cold and sick all the time. But it was enough to keep me from changing. I was going to keep pushing myself until I finally went too far. I wanted to know exactly what 'too far' was.

The boy and I sat down at a table. It was just the two of us, and I was surprised – I had seen him sitting at this table before, always surrounded by at least five or six other people. But no one showed up.

He took an apple from his pocket and began eating. I could feel his eyes on me. I opened my lunchbox. Every morning, before my aunt and uncle woke up, I prepared it. I put in several containers, with maybe a spoonful of different leftovers in each one, and then I sloshed it around. That way, if they checked when I came home, which I knew they did, it would look like I had used whatever was in them, like I was a normal, healthy teenager.

"I guess I forgot to pack it since yesterday," I said, after I'd opened the box to reveal the nearly-empty Tupperware.

"I could lend you some money to get something from a vending machine," said the boy.

"I'm fine."

"Are you sure?"

"Yeah. I'll get something at home. It's only like two hours until the day's over."

"Okay then." He went back to eating his apple. When he was done, he tossed the core basketball-style towards the garbage can at the end of the room. It bounced off the wall and fell in loudly. He let out a short cheer, then turned back to me. "So. Tell me about yourself."

"You already seem to know everything."

"Pft, no way."

"I'm Akito Sohma. I live with my aunt and uncle. I'm fifteen. I go to school."

"Tell me something interesting."

"Cranberry Jello is the only kind made with real fruit."

His name was Kakeru, but he wouldn't tell me how he got "Flying Pot-kun" from that. We spent the next few lunch hours the same way. He asked me questions, I deflected. Eventually, he realized that if he asked weird enough questions, I'd be caught off guard and say more than I intended.

"Have you ever been to Iceland?"

"I've never been out of the province."

"If you could instantly be an expert at one topic, what would you choose?"

"I don't know."

"You have to know! What are your interests?"

"Science, I guess."

"What area of science?"

"I don't know."

"If you could live anywhere, where would you live?"

"Another planet."

I still wasn't sure why I was hanging out with him. Maybe it was because he was nice to me, but I wasn't usually drawn to people who were. Or maybe just because he waved me over each lunch hour, and it made me feel less pathetic than if I was spending the time sitting by myself studying stuff I already knew.

Or because, when his constant stream of questions slowed to a trickle, it was my turn to ask, and I found out he was more like me than I thought. He also tried to deflect, I realized, but I could use his own strategy and ask things he didn't expect, and he would reveal sides of himself he didn't normally display to the world.

I found out he had a half-sister, and a brother or maybe half-brother or maybe she had a half-brother. He didn't like the way their parents treated his half-sister. She went to a different school. He wanted to take a trip to Japan when he graduated. He wasn't sure where he wanted to live, but he couldn't stay here all his life, he just couldn't.

He talked about his girlfriend a lot. They'd been going out for a month, and he was crazy about her.

"Are you seeing anyone?" he asked me.

"No."

"Do you like anyone? I know most people here, and I can try setting you up with someone if you want."

"It's all right."

"How about Lisa? The tall girl, with the long brown hair. She plays on the basketball team."

"I.... you... wait. You knew that I.... how?"

"That you like girls, you mean?"

I nodded.

"I didn't know it was a secret. Don't worry, I won't tell anyone." He paused. I didn't know which shocked me more – that he could just tell, or that he was so totally unfazed, "So... still not interested in Lisa?"

"I don't think I'm really at a point where I should be going out with anyone."

"Okay. I get that."

Kakeru and I started to spend time together outside of school. We would go to his house when his family was out. He lived in an old-fashioned neighborhood, and the downstairs of his house sold imported food. The roof was pressed tin, and everything smelled like spices I remembered from family gatherings way back, when everything was different, but I couldn't put a name to them. We played video games and watched action movies. The sounds were otherworldly as they filled the thin walls of the almost-empty house.

Other times we walked around the town, just talking. He had all kinds of ideas of what he was going to do when he got out of here, and I started to think the same way. Whey I told him I was going to move to the city, some day, I could tell he was thrilled that I finally had some plans.

Everywhere we went, people knew him, and he introduced me as his friend. He acted with his usual energetic friendliness, and he obviously had the type of attitude that would make someone popular. That still left the question of why we ate lunch alone together. Sometimes people would join us as we hung out, like his girlfriend or people from his Japanese class, but mainly it was just us.

Komaki was in my physics class. She and I alternated between the first and second top mark. She was friendly to me, but until she found out I was Kakeru's friend, we had never had a conversation that went beyond basic politeness. She was his girlfriend, and as the months passed, the two of them stayed together. Sometimes Kakeru would be absent from school for a few days, and she'd ask me about him.

"How was he acting yesterday?"

"I don't know. Normal, I guess."

"Did he say anything about missing today."

"No, but he's probably just skipping."

"Yeah. That's probably it."

Since she was his girlfriend, I was surprised she was asking me these things. She should have known him better than I did. But it turned out he didn't let her into his family life much more than me.

He was a good student, but he skipped class quite a bit. If you asked him about it, that's exactly what he'd say: "I just felt like skipping." I could understand a need for secrets. I didn't talk much about my family life, either.

When the pandemic hit, everything went to hell.

Komaki's dad was a doctor, and was returning from overseas when it broke loose. He was at work at the local hospital when he fell into a coughing fit, and he was immediately taken to the city hospital and put into isolation. One of his coworkers also caught the disease, apparently from him, and also had to be taken away.

I found this all out from Kakeru, who was a mess over it. Komaki and her mom weren't allowed to leave their house, and he couldn't go visit her. Some nights they talked over the phone for hours, others she would barely say two words. Kakeru's attendance fell to pieces, and soon he missed more days than he showed up. Sometimes he'd be there for the morning then gather up his stuff and silently leave.

His friendliness also took the hit. He seemed angry a lot now, and that aggressiveness I'd seen in him the first time we'd met now hung about him at all times, except when he sat with his head in his hands, refusing to talk to anyone, even me.

Usually, when he was like this, I'd still sit beside him, in case he felt like saying anything, or on the off chance it meant something to him to have someone beside him.

"Let's go for a walk," he said to me one day. It was the first full sentence he'd said to me for days, and the first time he'd asked to spend time together all month.

It was just before last period, which was math for me. I had a test coming up. I quickly weighed each option, then said, "Okay."

We went down by the lake. Cold flowed off the ice-rimmed water. Small waves reached for a burning blue sky. Snow clung to almost barren trees, and everything smelled like decaying leaves, like the end of a season. We walked by the tarnished metal war memorials, the worn stone path cracking from the memory of the roots that reclaimed the underground each summer.

"You're lucky," he said to me.

"Why?" I kicked a stone and it scattered over the ice, into the water with a splash I could see but not hear from this distance.

"You know who you are."

"Not really."

"More than I do." He picked up a stone himself, hurtled it nearly out of view. Water flew as it hit, like a small explosion. "Every day I see what I don't want to become, but I have no idea what I already am."

"You're a good person."

"I scare myself. I scared my old school friends away. I just... lost it. I'm always trying to play this role, and sometimes I just can't." More rocks bombed the river, a few loudly shattering ice.

"We're teenagers. Of course we don't know everything about ourselves yet."

"Then what do we do? How do we make this make sense?"

"I don't know." I jumped up, grabbed a gnarled tree branch, and swung my legs up. I managed to get on top of a branch, and I climbed. The tree was fascinatingly misshapen, branches twisting up, down, vertical and horizontal. I got as high as looked safe, then up two more branches. Below me, the boy standing in front of the freezing lake, his clothes and black hair blowing in the wind of a storm coming in, his face turned away from me but an expression which I knew would be unreadable, looked so lost. "We live, I guess."

Komaki's dad died three days later. I'm not sure about the other guy he infected. At school, Kakeru got into a fight against half a dozen other guys, and ended up with a broken arm and a suspension. I wasn't there when it happened. If I had been, I probably also would have done something that also got me injured and in trouble.

Komaki's family moved.

I didn't see Kakeru for two weeks. I stopped by his house to visit him, but his family was home. I almost asked if he was there, but lost my nerve and loitered for half an hour, staring into space, then left with a bag of seaweed flavored chips. I walked around the town eating them, unable to decide if I liked the taste. The sky was strange, blue fading into pink fading into white as it got higher. It was giant and meaningless and beautiful, and I lay in my back in a damp, dead field, watching it slowly darken.

I got home late that night. I went straight to bed without studying, but I can't remember if I slept.

When Kakeru finally showed up at school, it was the end of a Friday. "I'm leaving," he said.

"School?"

"This whole town."

"Oh," I said. "Congratulations."

"Thanks."

"Where are you going?"

He told me the name of a town. "It's not the city, but it's close. I could walk to Komaki's house from there."

"Are you happy?"

He smiled. It was a sad smile, but a real one. "I'm going to be."

"I'll miss you."

"I'll miss you too." He paused. "Do you have some paper?"

I pulled my binder from my backpack. "Here."

In black ink, he drew a few Japanese letters in careful calligraphy. "That's my name. If you take the meaning of the letters, they can mean 'flying pot'." He wrote more, in English this time, and in numbers. "That's my new address. Come visit sometime, if you get the chance."

I walked with him to the train. He waved to me through the fogged glass, and then he was gone.

-/-/-/-

I leave things out, obviously. But probably not as much as I should. I still feel like I talk for too long, say more than I should. But maybe the only way certain things get said is if I let down my discretion and just... talk. Mess up, confess, for the opportunity of something coming out of it.

At any rate, I keep their attention.

"Did you ever see him again?" says Tohru.

"Not yet." The city he went to is a day's drive from here, and the times I've been in the right mood to talk to him, I haven't had the chance.

-/-/-/-

**Tohru:**

I saw her, S, sometimes; tapping her white cane on the sidewalk across the street, or turning it over in her hands as she waited at bus stops. We never talked. She didn't take the disability bus anymore. I would have waved to her, if she'd been able to see it. But although the thought of her made words rush through my mind, made even my blood go faster so that I couldn't sleep when I started thinking about her, when I saw her I could never think up the right way to start a conversation.

Next year, when I started high school, everything was different.

-/-/-/-

We moved to the city where my grandfather lived because my mom knew she was going to die.

Losing her changed me. Her death wasn't sudden, or it shouldn't have been. She knew what she had, she knew for years, knew the timeframe for the last months of her life. And she told me everything, there were no secrets in our small family, one day at the dinner table after days of looking pale and worried and shaky and disheveled and small, like she could get lost in her clothes. As she explained I nodded and cried into my soup and said I love you and she said, I know, I love you too, I'll always love you. I felt like my heart would burst.

She cried too. We held each other and tried to hold onto hope. Hope became like G-d for us: distant and invisible, untouchable, sometimes illogical, and yet, if you think about it the right way, everywhere and everything, quietly holding up the world. During that time, hope and faith darted about, bright and tiny and erratic as fireflies.

The inevitable can still be sudden. No plan or explanation can stop the moment where the ground disappears, when you feel your heart break, the mornings where you wake up knowing that an era is over. The things that will never happen again, little things like the music of her laugh, the way she pedaled her bicycle to work with her jacket catching the wind behind her and fanning out like wings, how she swam under the surface of the ocean with her hair floating all over and how she blew bubbles like a kid and broke the surface with a gasp and a laugh, water pouring off of her.

The smell of her cooking, her getting distracted and burning things and apologizing for it and me saying it's okay, I can just pick the burnt parts off, mm, it's great, or in the worst cases, where the whole thing was charred black and inedible, ash crumbling under cutlery, the scent of smoke haunting the house for days. How her fingers tap-danced over phone buttons so instantly, like when piano players finish a piece with a flourish.

All of it, gone. No longer part of this world you've got to continue living in, absence leaving a hole right through you, aching, stinging in the air. To keep going day after day knowing the tomorrows eventually stop.

I found her in her bed, surrounded by morning light coming in past the curtains. Eyes closed, mouth slightly open in that innocent, exhausted way, arms serenely embracing her pillow.

It was a good way to die. Comfortable, peaceful. Almost painless, at least for that night, gone to bed happy, even knowing this was coming. Accepting it.

I went into the living room. My hands shook as I dialed. I kept hitting the wrong button or taking so long the phone's memory would clear itself and I'd have to start over. It took me seven tries before I got it typed in right. It rang twice before he picked up. "It happened," I told my grandfather. He told me he would be there to pick me up, he'd called the hospital, but I could hear in his voice he knew it was over.

After the call, I went up to her room again and sat down on the floor beside her bed. Her hair was barely mussed, the sheets weren't tangled. She really hadn't struggled at all, not even tossing in her sleep. I wouldn't have been able to be that brave, that content. I brushed the few stray strands back from her face and said all her names I knew.

Kyoko Shizimura.

Kyoko Honda.

Mom.

And then the tears started, torrents of them, bitter waterfalls pouring from my eyes down my face, soaking my clothes and the carpet, and sobs grabbed hold and shook me and my words dissolved in all the water and the sound of love and loss and an ending.

-/-/-/-

Daniel touches my shoulder and takes my hand, directs me aside now that Britt and Akito are talking. "I'm going to get a yogurt. Wanna come, Tohru?"

"Okay, see you guys in a minute." Once we're out of earshot, I say, "What's wrong?"

A few more steps before he answers. "Did something... happen? Those questions you were asking..."

I fiddle with my hair with my free hand. "She called me. Yesterday?"

"She? S, you mean?"

"Yes."

"You gave her your number?"

"My home phone – my grandfather's house."

"And?"

"She said... she said she's coming back."

Daniel lets out a long, slow breath. "Are you ready for this?"

"I don't know." We order one blueberry and one strawberry frozen yogurt. "Are you?"

He doesn't reply.


	10. X: Twin Cinema

**A/N: **Here is a new chapter. Question: is it too long? Would anyone prefer if future chapters were shorter? Many many thank yous to yellowis4happy, dishrag-chan, and midday. This chapter is a New Pornographers song title. In case it's not clear, the very last scene is a flashback.

**edit: it was, indeed, too long. so now it has been split into a two part chapter. hope you enjoy!**

**Deconstruction  
X: Twin Cinema**

-/-/-/-

**Akito:**

"So is that why you moved?" says Britt. "Because of what he said?"

I need to think it over. "I think I would have moved eventually," I say slowly, giving myself time to think, "but it would have taken longer. Everyone knew so much about me, but that was all in the past and I just wanted to move on. Kakeru showed me how to do that."

I came here for that city feeling, that anonymity. So I could stop feeling like the weird one, or at least be weird for strangers rather than people I knew and cared about. I stayed up late studying every night after Kakeru left, so that I could get the scholarship I applied for to go into the accelerated program and move to a city where schools offered it.

Everything I have is the result of my fear of other people's expectations.

Daniel and Tohru go to get yogurt. Britt says, "Are you happier here?"

I should be. I have to be. "I think so."

"That's good."

I look towards Tohru and Daniel. Deeply engaged in conversation as they wait for their orders, neither is smiling. A pulse of worry chills me, until I decide to stop flattering myself and that they're probably talking about something that has nothing to do with me. I'd been fairly tactful with my story, and they nodded as I talked rather than cringing or even looking too surprised when I mentioned gender-revealing details.

Wait.

Did they already know?

I am an _idiot. _And I've never been happier to realize it. I almost laugh, but then Britt _would _think I was some kind of freak.

"It feels like I haven't talked to you in so long," I say.

"Yeah. Same."

"How are you?"

She looks mildly surprised, like she's not used to being asked. "Okay, you?"

"Okay."

As Daniel and Tohru come back, I almost forget about their conversation. I'm too overcome by the paradigm shift – who else knows? Rin and Jazzy don't, I'm pretty sure. Or Yuki. But would they act any differently if they did? Jazzy's hardly gender-normative and no one seems bothered. My teachers don't know, at least not my art teacher. Did that girl at the party? Kureno –

My stomach twists into a knot. Oh.

I've been trying to block that night from my memory. It resurfaces in sharp, technicolor relief whenever I start to wonder what that vague sense of loss lurking in my thoughts is caused by.

The look on his face when I yelled at him... I wasn't used to having so much power over another person. It kind of scared me. But the thought of what could have happened, if I hadn't gotten out of there... that was worse.

How can I be so terrified of both control and lack of it?

No, this can't happen. This thinking so much that I make myself sick, stop it. I'm surrounded by people who know me, who accept me. I'm with a girl who I like, and who I have a chance with. Don't ruin this.

"So, let's go meet Caylee and Ritsu," I say. "I haven't seen them in ages."

-/-/-/-

**Kyo:**

Every since I really became aware of my existence, I've been running. It's always been there, a constant in my life. I need that. Everyone needs that, I think: something they can control.

As a preteen, standing on the doorstep, turning the key, on days when t.v. sounds pounded all the way outside, because my mom thought that way no one would hear her crying through the walls. I'd leave her, locking herself away in her room, and I'd toss my backpack in the corner and turn back out, slamming the door behind me.

I'd tune in to my music, slightly broken headphones shooting sound and electric shocks through me and I'd run. It was this sudden reminder of why I did the things I did to feel alive. It's funny, 'cause most of the songs I liked, even as a kid, weren't happy ones, but they made everything seem less mind-crushingly hopeless. I guess it was just knowing I wasn't the only screwed-up freak who'd felt like this.

The streets ate the bottoms of my jeans and I could only go a few kilometers before the stitch in my side would cause me to collapse into the grass or on a bench. And then, sometimes, I'd laugh, even though nothing was funny – just because I felt _good,_ and it was so different to be happy, like gravity wasn't pulling me down so hard as usual.

Then I'd draw. Or vandalize, I guess, depending on your perspective. The first time wasn't planned, I'd found a pencil stub in my pocket, thought "Why the hell not?" and started scribbling on the arm of a bench. I got so into it, by the time I was done I was squinting in the strained sunlight, wood splintered under my fingernails from ripping at the pencil to get at more lead, both arms of the bench entirely covered, along with some of the pavement.

I'd made this comic, sort of. Except it didn't have panels. It was supposed to, but then details started leaking over the borders, so in the end I stopped planning and just drew. It was about a superhero who could control wind, so that it could lift him up and he'd fly, and he could save people from falling, and he could fight evil with cyclones he willed into being. He saved all the innocent bystanders, stopped the crimes, got the girl. For superheroes, stuff always works out in the end.

When the story was complete, at least for the time being, the wind carried him and his girlfriend, another superhero, one who could control plants, off to new places and adventures. In the last scene, drawn on the pathway like a graphite puddle leaking from the bench, they smiled as, with arms outstretched, they soared away.

It's gone now. Faded by the sun and scraped by the sleeves of people stopping to rest, washed away by the rain – it was nearly gone after the first few days, and after two weeks it looked as though it never was. That's okay. The things I make are meant to be temporary, because they're part of the city and the city is always changing.

If running is my constant, this is the yin to the yang, entirely transitory. My style changes all the time. As I'm pulling a paint can from my backpack and quickly shaking it, hearing the paint rattle inside, I know that I'll be lucky is it doesn't get whited out in a week. But until then, at least I'll have something to look at, something that lets me have some impact on the things I see everyday.

I still vandalize and I still run. As I switched schools, moved from a house to an apartment, passed in and out of friendships and relationships, I pushed myself to go further, get stronger. I couldn't stand still.

**-/-/-/-**

When a time ends, you usually don't realize it. Or I don't, at least. I guess.... I guess you get so used to the way things are that you don't _notice _stuff until it's gone, whether it's good or bad. You don't think about it. But you feel it, sometimes, like energy, a beat to move to, or else like a membrane between you and the world.

When my mom died, my dad and I moved into a small apartment. We gave up on the illusion of being a family and stopped talking to each other. We yell sometimes. Being angry is better than being nothing.

**-/-/-/-**

**Tohru:**

"It's okay, Grandpa – I can take the bus."

"Nonsense, there's no need to when it's hardly out of Taro's way."

Taro cut in – "Actually, I have to go right now, and if she isn't ready –"

"You're ready, aren't you Tohru?"

"I have to get my backpack from my room, but other than that."

"See?" I could hear the smile in my grandfather's voice. I dashed to retrieve my pack. "Have a good day!" he called after Taro and I as we left the house.

"Bye! You too!" I said, waving behind me.

"Come on!" said Taro, the car door slamming as he stepped in. I got into the passenger side, then had some difficulty transferring my overfull backpack into the back seat. Taro tapped his finger on the dashboard as I maneuvered the heavy, unwieldy bundle, try to fit it between the space of the two chairs without dropping it or hitting his head. Once I'd finished and seatbelted myself in, he pulled out of the driveway without a word.

Despite having gone through my morning routine, if I can call it a routine considering this was the first day of it, I didn't feel ready at all. I've never minded school, even if I'm not particularly good at it. I hadn't anticipated being nervous. First days have always made me anxious, with so many people I don't know all around, but I thought, with everything that had happened, things like this wouldn't bother me anymore. They shouldn't have bothered me.

Mom wouldn't have wanted me to worry. She would tell me to be brave and do my best, that if I was true to myself then of course the other students would like me, all the ones whose opinions mattered at least. I looked out the window with newfound determination at the colours washing past. Mid-height, brown buildings. The school was minutes away.

"Lot of stuff," says Taro.

"Huh?"

"Your backpack. You know you only need textbooks and a binder for your first day, don't you? And you probably won't even use those."

"I know."

"Then what's in your backpack?"

"Oh... you know..." I could feel his eyes fixed on me, refusing to release me until I'd supplied an answer he found acceptable. "My lunch... a book... my screenplay binder... calculator-"

"You brought your screenplays?"

"Yes."

"Why?"

"In case I want to work on them."

"You work on them all the time, and it's not like you've ever finished one."

"I might be close."

"You don't know?"

"I'll know when it's finished." The car parked with a jerk and I stepped out, then took my stuff from the back. "Thank you for the ride. Sorry Grandpa made you do it."

The wind stung my skin and tossed my long hair all around. As I opened the door to the building I was hit by a blast of warm air and a wave of sound. Students were everywhere, pressed close together, talking to their friends.

I tried to avoid people as I walked, but it was difficult to get control where I went – most of the crowd ignored me and obscured my path or pressed me in the wrong direction. I couldn't get close enough to the doors to make out enough of the room numbers to put them into a pattern to find my class. I turned in circles, like I thought the answer to everything might be hiding right behind me.

It was while I was like this, trying to take in everything around me, that I saw her.

S was talking with some friends, all three of them wearing black. My first thought was that they were some kind of school club, but as I got closer the rips in their clothes told me it wasn't formalwear.

She was sitting on a bench beside a person with long red hair. A girl with brown hair was standing talking to them. I walked up to them. "Hi," I said to S. "I don't know if you remember me, but we met last year."

Her friends turned to look at me. She said, "Tohru, isn't it?"

And so it began.

**-/-/-/-**

Here are some things about S.

She listened to music all the time. Sound waves overflowed from her headphones and filled the air around her whenever it was quiet.

She moved with confidence, like she was comfortable in any space, and sometimes I forgot she couldn't see. Sometimes it felt like she was looking right at me.

She smelled like spices, like mint or rosemary.

Being around her, in that aura, made everything feel more new and interesting.

She didn't take off her sunglasses, even at her house.

Her parents yelled at each other a lot, and sometimes their arguments leaked through the walls of her room. Neither of us ever mentioned this or them.

She had two older brothers, both of whom had already moved out. Most of her clothes were hand-me-downs from them. She didn't mind this.

Emitt, the one who was closest to her in age, still lived in town, attending the university. Sometimes he got her tickets to concerts and they went together. She invited me along once, to a band that was supposed to be a big deal. At first I was worried I'd have to pretend to enjoy it, but as the guitars started up and the vocals rung out, and the bass thumped through the floor and what must have been thousands of hands started to clap in rhythm, I fell into it.

It was like falling underwater and realizing I could breath. It was like I was suddenly surrounded by something, part of something, more than just air. I sang with the chorus, feeling the sound move all through my body. I was part of the crowd that cheered them back on for three more songs at the end of the show and when it was over we walked into the night, buzzing with happiness, voices worn and laughing.

That was the first time we kissed. She touched my face gently, following the curve of an eyebrow, tracing my cheek, nose, lips. "I want to feel how you feel," she said. Her brother had gone to get the car and we were waiting on a bench in the park. "Your expression. Your emotion."

I don't know if she was leaning in to kiss me or if it was just that she was tired and wanted someone warm close to her, but I felt a tug to close the last of the distance between us. As her mouth pressed against mine, it surprised me that I would initiate something like that. I'm sure it was that last song's fault, making everything feel so possible.

I'm still glad I heard that song.

One time when she was over at my house Taro told her to stay away from me. She didn't listen to him. Sometimes I worried that she only asked me out officially in order to spite him. Sometimes it all at once occurred to me that we really didn't have much in common, her and I.

Her room was empty except for her bed, a desk, a rolling chair, and an electric keyboard Emitt brought home from a garage sale for her when he still lived there.

She played it everyday, crazily, frantically, beautifully. The dark of her clothes seemed to swirl as she moved, hands all over from one end to the other, able to go from glassy, rainy soft chimes to hammering, thundering chords in an instant. She played so fast I couldn't figure out what I was hearing. So I stopped trying to figure it out and just listened.

Sometimes, even though I liked it, it was hard to listen to. All those thoughts and feelings without words were too much to take in in that blank room. With no windows and the door closed, it was like they had nowhere to go except into my head, around and around.

One time I caught her smoking and it made me cry.

My emotions have always been close to the surface, but I know it seemed like an overreaction even by my standards. She sharpened everything I felt. It was very confusing. I know I worried about her getting hurt more than she did.

She could see light, or feel it maybe. If she held fabric over her eyes and stood with her face to the sun, she could tell if the cloth was black or white. She said the doctors never explained how she could do this. I liked to imagine them in lab coats, puzzling over equations and microscopes and coming up with nothing. It was a miracle. One day it occurred to me that maybe she just never asked.

All her clothes were either black or white.

I transferred from drama to philosophy in second semester so I could be in her class. I never told her this. She was happy to have someone to talk to, but I would have felt silly if she knew how much it meant to me to be around her.

**-/-/-/-**

**Yuki:**

Rin's been drawing on her arms again. They're folded across her knees as she sits opposite me on the train, feet pulled up on the seat, staring at the blurred city graffiti flashing past the window. Dark, flowering vines cover most of her skin. Most of the flowers are nothing that would bloom on earth – abstract swirls, stars, feathers, guitars, skeletons, things recognizable as flowers but with too many colours to be real, band names, people.

"It's just as well we didn't tell him," she says.

"We still might."

"He'd turn us in."

"I think that if he was like that we'd already have been reported for the party."

She studies her fingernails. "I've been consoling Kureno all week. I guess he can come across a bit weird, but there's no way he would have done... that."

"I know."

She smiles bitterly. "Yeah, of course you do. He is weirder than usual around Akito, though."

"Does he like him?"

"Like, _like _like?"

I nod.

She shrugs. "I don't know. I can't really picture him liking anyone."

"There's more to him than he lets on."

"Yeah," says Rin, "that's why no one has a clue what's going through his head half the time. Maybe him and Akito would make a good match after all."

**-/-/-/-**

Hard as it is to believe, I came up with the plan.

"_We hold our arms like broken wings.  
Our feathers clipped,  
Nobody sings.  
Around our footsteps, sky falls.  
Puddles blackly  
Drown us out.  
One day,  
Sound will slip  
Untranslated  
Past your lips  
Through the floorboards,  
Through the ground  
We'll close our eyes  
And jump. No wait,  
No pause, no goodbye,  
Under our shoes  
We'll feel sky."_

The words rang out in Rin's clear voice through the cafeteria as Kureno, Haru and I sat around the table. Her expression never changed as her gaze traveled over the single sheet of lined paper, and it was impossible to tell whether she approved. Finally she slammed the sheet down on the table, looked directly at Kureno and said, "Why didn't you tell us you could write?"

"It's not important," he said, reaching for the paper.

Rin pulled it away. "Yes, it is. This is good. Really, really good. If you can't appreciate that, you don't deserve to have talent."

Kureno, apparently stumped over whether to protest or accept this as a compliment, was silent a long time. When Rin refused to say another word or look away from him, he said, "Can I have it back, please." It wasn't really a question. Most things that would be questions if other people said them aren't when they come from him. He talks like the answer is already decided, and an inquiry or insistence from him won't make any difference.

"Only if you do something with it."

"Like what."

"Get it published."

"Doesn't our school have a competition for that now?" said Haru. "They pick the best poem and it goes into a magazine."

"You know they'll only choose a shitty poem about school spirit," said Rin. "Or things that were socially relevant a hundred years back."

"We should make our own magazine," said Haru.

"No one in this school would read it," said Kureno. It was true. The students who were accepting of those in our group either didn't like reading or didn't have money – and we couldn't afford to photocopy enough for several copies of a magazine and give it out for free. The people who liked reading and could afford it tended to think we were freaks.

"What if we put it somewhere where they'd start reading it without knowing what it was? And then, once they figured it out, they'd be so into it that they'd finish?" I said.

"You mean like posting pages of it around the school?" said Haru.

"They'd get taken down within the day," said Kureno.

"What about," I said, "if we put it in the yearbook."

Rin laughed. "That would be amazing. All those jocks expecting to see their photo, and instead they get stuck with us."

"No, really," I said, "Britt's in yearbook, and Kureno, you're good with computers. Jazzy could design the look of it, and we can put photos and drawings and text into it." Noticing their expressions, I added, "By the time it's printed, we'll already have graduated so there's nothing they can do to us."

"So, would we put our names on it or be mysterious, anonymous art-hackers?" said Rin.

"Names," I said, "so that this school will remember who we are. And since we're all going into literary or visual arts careers anyway, it will help to establish a reputation early."

I was being reckless, and I knew it. Even if the school couldn't expel us, I was sure there were other things someone could do. But that didn't matter. If we ended up on the six o'clock news, we'd make the best of the attention. We were going to do something crazy, something that would take the rest of the student body by storm. Everyone who thought they knew us would see the sides of us they never took the time to consider, all after we were gone.

"Okay," said Rin. "Let's do that, then."

And then there was no going back.

**(((chapter continued)))**


	11. X: Twin Cinema part two

(((if you are getting an alert for this story in your inbox, please know that this is not a new chapter. it is a continuation of the last one, which was previously posted all together as one document. it has come to my attention (thank you, yellowis4happy) that this chapter would be more enjoyable to read broken into two. thanks for reading, and please let me know what you think. i pay attention to the comments i receive, see? haha, hope everyone is having a good summer!)))

**-/-/-/-**

**Tohru:**

As we clear out table and set off towards Caylee and Ritsu, I hear Daniel say something to Akito, too quietly for me to make out the words, and I glimpse the blur of movement as he gestures in my direction. Soon after, Akito takes my hand. I smile. They're both so kind, Akito and Daniel. And so obvious.

As usual, Akito doesn't lead. She guides me, a bit, but mostly she simply walks beside me, our footsteps settled into a comfortable rhythm. Mostly, I think she just wants to hold my hand.

I'm good with that.

The stores pass by, rectangles of colour along the walls. There's talking all around us, but Akito and I are quiet. Daniel and Britt carry on polite conversation, but it's mostly silence, too. We've all got a lot to think about.

It's over between S and I. We both made sure of that, last time we saw each other. We were better as friends than as a couple, and if we kept trying to force something that wasn't working we would lose our friendship, too. It was clear.

But I hadn't heard from her in over a year. Emitt and I stayed in touch, still do. He was the one who told me about her coming back, who encouraged me to call her yesterday. And hearing her voice, hearing that it was true, felt strange. Like being in a dream, or underwater. Like when I opened my eyes or broke the surface, I'd find myself somewhere else.

I listen to Akito's footsteps, feel the warmth of her skin. I want to stay here.

We walk under the white-and-gold glowing sign that covers the entrance of the department store. It's different in here, less crowded than the rest of the mall and therefore quieter, and the light is more focused.

I used to always get headaches in places like this when I was little, and Mom told me it was because there were so many things, so much clothes and colour and brightness in every direction, that my brain couldn't decide what my eyes should look at.

She helped me pick out sunglasses, and that became one of our things to do together. I used to have quite a collection, different tints and levels of darkness, all kinds of sizes and frames. Childrens' sunglasses with pink, star-shaped plastic frames that I wore over my regular glasses, to prescription ones that darkened whenever the light got brighter.

I wonder whatever happened to all those glasses.

"Britt and I will take the left path and look for them," says Daniel, "if you two want to take the right one."

"That sounds good," I say. "Does that work for you, Akito?"

"Sure," she says.

"We'll all meet up at the exit," I say.

We say and wave our goodbyes, then walk.

"Is there anything you want to look at along the way?" I ask Akito.

"Not really. I'm trying to save up."

"For next year?"

"I guess. For the future in general."

"Do you know what you're doing after high school?"

She takes a long time to answer. "No."

"Me either," I say. I smile at her, worried I've made her uncomfortable. "I applied to some schools, but they didn't reply. Do you think that means I didn't get in?"

"It's probably because you sent your application really early, and they don't usually send out replies in December."

"Oh. That would make sense, then."

"So where did you apply to?"

"Some places in British Columbia, Ontario, some American schools... a lot of schools, actually. I don't know what I want to study, so I applied to everything that sounded interesting."

"What are you interested in?"

"Everything. But I'm not good at everything – like Bio class, it's all so interesting but I'm failing because I can't remember the details."

"Bio level thirty?"

"Yes."

"I took that last year. I could help you study some time, if you want."

"That would be wonderful!"

"It's no problem," she says, her voice quieter than usual. I realize I've embarrassed her.

While I'm trying to think up something to say, I hear two familiar voices nearby. I look in the direction of the sound, and there are two figures up ahead. It can be hard to tell people from mannequins sometimes, but I recognize Ritsu by the rings of colour surrounding his arms, and Caylee by the blond spikes radiating from the back of her head.

"This is one of their favorite shops," I say to Akito. "Caylee's oma used to take us all after school sometimes. Ritsu gets almost all his clothes here."

"That's nice," says Akito. There's a pause before she speaks and the words come out sounding a bit awkward, like they don't quite fit the shape of her mouth. But I decide this is because I've been talking too much and she's not sure what to say, not because she's bothered by Ritsu wearing this type of clothing. If she was, she'd have said something like "Isn't this the women's section?" or made some kind of joke about him.

Yes, I've had this conversation before.

Akito doesn't seem like the type who would judge, though.

"Hello!" I say, waving to Caylee and Ritsu. They look up from the piece of clothing they're examining, set it on a shelf and wave back, coming towards us. I let go of Akito's hand and embrace them each in turn.

"It's great to see you again," says Caylee.

"You too!"

"Hello, Akito," says Ritsu.

"Hey," says Akito.

We talk about what's happened in the week since we saw each other, mostly related to school and work. Ritsu has to make an art project about artichokes, and Caylee persists in her struggle to convince parents that taking toddlers into eighteen-plus rated movies is not advisable.

Akito's quiet. I try to include her in conversation, but now that our group only gets together a couple times a month there's so much that needs to be said that it's hard to slow down and explain. As I'm turning to clarify a joke about the theater where Caylee works that needs some back-story, I find myself facing empty air.

I turn in search of Akito, but before I become too frantic her voice says, "Over here. Look at this." She's in an aisle, holding up a beige article of clothing. The three of us approach.

It's definitely an interesting find: a pair of tapered corduroy capris, embroidered with designs of pineapples, strawberries, and slices of watermelon, all the same size. I laugh. We all laugh.

"Wow," says Caylee. "Who would wear that?"

"Eccentric people?" suggests Ritsu.

"I'm pretty sure you qualify as eccentric, but I can't picture you wearing these."

"Me either..."

"What do they cost?" says Caylee.

"Seventy dollars," says Akito.

"I wonder if anyone will buy them," I say. "If they stock them, the store owners must think there's some market. What do you think the story is, of the person who designed them?"

"I was thinking the same thing," says Akito.

"Some poor farm boy," says Ritsu quietly, "with a dream."

Caylee joins in, "Growing up on the tropical farms of a small island off the coast of Hawaii, he aspired for more than picking mysteriously large strawberries and mysteriously small pineapples day in and day out."

The story evolves as we resume walking. By the time we meet up with Daniel and Britt, the farm boy's journey has taken him to three continents and his fashion style, avant-garde-noveau-fruit, is taking runways by storm the world over.

"What's so funny?" says Daniel.

Caylee tries to explain, but is having trouble getting words out between her laughing, and by the end of her exposition Daniel says, "Okay," in a resigned way that makes it clear he's more confused now than he was before he asked.

"Let's get to Flamingoes," says Britt.

Outside it's getting dark, everything painted over in pale blue. There's a wind, and we walk with our hands deep in our pockets. I find Akito and walk beside her, wordlessly taking her hand. This is better.

We keep holding on even as we run to make it to the bus a block away, shoes crunching through snow. I love the sound of it, the wind and the humming of the bus and our movements as the city shuts down, our laughter out of relief when we make it, coins clinking in the slot as we thank the driver and take our seats.

**-/-/-/-**

**Kyo:**

My dad is from a different time. His name is carved in angular, official letters into a plaque high on the gym wall. He played football and that made him a hero. He talked about it to me, sometimes, when I was younger. He never talked to me much, so I held onto every word even though I didn't know what half of them meant. That was the age where I still tried to make myself into something he'd care about.

But by the time high school started, that time had been over for several years and we were just two people who happened to live in the same shitty apartment.

I was strong. Running had made me so, and I had a good handle on my emotions. I refused to show weakness, to him or anyone. I had a job at a fruit drink place, and even though it sucked it gave me something to fill a few hours a day and enough spare change to buy paint.

I decided to try out for the football team. It wasn't because I wanted to impress anyone, it was simply because I could. Basically every guy was trying out, at least the ones I hung out with.

I didn't really have close friends, but between the jocks and the metalheads I could usually find a few people who'd tolerate my presence. Even the girls I dated I hardly knew – usually we met at a party, usually in someone's basement, and end up making out because we were drunk or bored or because we didn't want to be the only two people left alone.

We'd try to stay together afterwards, do 'official' dating stuff like a real couple, but it always fell flat. She'd get bored of me because I didn't see the point of talking all the time, or I'd get bored of her because she talked too much and had nothing to say, or it was just horribly uncomfortable in general. Sometimes we'd legitimately break up, but mostly we just started avoiding each other.

So when I tried out for the football team, I was pretty sure no one would care. I didn't even really care – it made it easier this way, to not care about most things I did. No one likes whiny guys who get emotionally involved in everything, anyway.

I made it past the initial cuts. I liked the sport more than I'd expected – it felt great to be able to run as hard as I could, dodging opponents, and to be able to get all that intensity out. At the end of each game I was covered in bruises and feeling incredibly alive. I wasn't the best player, but I was confident that I was good enough to stay on the team.

Yuki was on the team, too. I'd gone to school with him since junior high. He was the kid who wasn't allowed to go on field trips because they might be dangerous, and who always handed in his homework ahead of time. He smiled at teachers and said goodnight to them at the end of the day and bought them presents when it was a holiday. He brought in food for the class that he'd made himself. If your pencil ran out of lead, he'd always have an extra one to lend you.

I hated him.

Hating him was the thing that made me mildly more socially acceptable to my other classmates. We hated how he spent lunch hour talking to the girly boys and the boyish girls and the kids who read books instead of playing soccer and the kids who barely spoke English and the kids who smelled weird. Actually, none of these people bothered me that much, but as part of the collective 'we' I had to act like they did. Somehow, Yuki talking to them was wrong. Surrounding himself with people so that he'd be the only one without an obvious flaw, so that he'd be even more of a shining star than he already was, was elitist.

Yeah, I know, I get it. I was a total bastard at that age. But I was poor, I was Japanese, and my parents were crazy – I was one rung on the social ladder above those poor freaks we tormented. Defending them, or even letting it be known that I didn't totally hate them, would be enough to make me one of them.

One day in practice, while our coach went to get the rest of the footballs, Garrett told me we were trying out a new play, and to run. I began to cut a diagonal line across the crisp yellow grasp, but when I was only a few yards away, out of the corner of my eye, I saw the projectile slamming towards me. I spun to catch it, doing something weird to my shoulder and throwing myself off balance, but at the same time my fingers closing around its satisfying weight.

For only a second. Then I couldn't tell what I was feeling, except a lot of pain and confusion. Someone tackled me, then another guy, until I couldn't see anymore and felt like I was being steamrolled into the ground. There was laughter, and everything was dizzy and heavy. My chest felt like it would collapse and my head like it would explode. I couldn't tell where my arms and legs were.

I blacked out. Next thing I knew, coach was yelling at people, his face purple, and Yuki was helping me up. The team was scattered around, avoiding looking at me.

I pushed Yuki's arm away, and immediately my legs gave out beneath me. I tried to stand, but the ground felt like it was shifting, and something was wrong with one of my legs. I looked down and saw my ankle was sharply twisted.

The coach stopped his yelling long enough to help me to the office. "Idiots," he muttered as we left the team behind. "Where are you hurt?"

"My ankle's messed up."

"Okay. Lucky it's just that. I swear, can't leave 'em alone for five minutes..."

"I'm quitting the team."

To my surprise he said, "Yeah. Sorry to hear it, but that's probably for the best."

When we got to the office, he asked if I was alright to wait by myself for the nurse. I said sure, and he nodded and left.

There was a girl sitting in the chair beside me. I was surprised, since school had been over for quite some time. She was the girl I'd seen hanging out with S's crowd, and someone told me she was blind, but it didn't look like she was. I mean, she turned to look at me as I came in, and her eyes moved. But I wasn't really sure how these things worked.

"What are you in for?" I said.

"I have a meeting to change my schedule," she said. "You?"

"Nurse," I said, trying to move my leg to demonstrate, but only ending up wincing as the angle changed."

"Oh! Yes, of course. Um, are you okay?"

"Yeah. I'll be fine."

"What happened?"

"Football."

"Are you on the team?"

"Not anymore."

"Can I look at your ankle? I've had first aid training."

"Go ahead."

I crossed my legs so that my ankle was towards her, and she carefully lifted the hem of my pants. "It's a sprain," she said. "You'll have to wear a brace on it so that it doesn't get worse, and you should probably put some ice so that the swelling goes down. That's all I can say."

"Thanks. Um, I'm Kyo Sohma."

"Oh my goodness, I didn't introduce myself yet, did I? Tohru Honda. Nice to meet you!" She stuck out her hand and I shook it. "Sorry it had to be under these circumstances."

I agreed, and then Tohru was called in to talk about her schedule. The nurse came by soon after and told me the exact same thing about my ankle that Tohru had.

I had to go to a guidance meeting the next day. They told me the school had registered me in self-defense classes. This caught me by complete surprise. For some reason I'd been expecting to get in trouble. An authority figure telling me I had to learn to fight better – that was something new.

**-/-/-/-**

**Akito:**

"Welcome, friends! Bonjour! Bonjour! Je m'appelle Ayame, veh zeh beit musika! Carpe flamingiosa... hm? What's this? A new customer?"

I almost fall over as the silver-haired man in a flowing lilac gown bursts from the door, smiling widely and arms outstretched in a grand gesture of... appreciation for grand gestures, I suppose. I'd had my arm out, about to turn the handle, and had thrown it towards the sky as I jerked back in shock. It looks like I'm trying to grab the moon.

I briefly wonder if, since he launched into his speech before he knew I was a new customer, he greets all his returning customer by flamboyantly introducing himself in at least four languages. After a few seconds I decide that yes, he does.

"This is Akito," says Tohru as the man ushers us inside. "Akito, this is Ayame."

The store is warm and smells of flowers and cedar. The lighting is colourful but soft – I look up to see a variety of tinted lights. A few people flip through the many c.d.s and records – it's surprisingly big in here, considering it looked basically like a shack from outside. A lone garden flamingo, the only indication that this was the right place, poked out from under the snow at the front of the shop.

"Lovely to meet you!" says Ayame. "Please look around, and let me know if there is anything you're looking for." He paused, looking at me. "Have we met before, by any chance?"

"No," I say, "I think I'd remember you."

"Then are you related to Hatori Sohma, perhaps?"

"He's my cousin."

"Aha! Magnificent! And how is Hatori?"

"He's doing okay," I say, wondering how well this man actually knows him.

"Yes, that sounds like him."

"How do you know him?"

Ayame gets a far away look in his eyes. He sweeps his arm across the room as though he is directing my eyes towards a vast ocean. "Hatori and I were the best of friends in high school! Along with Shigure, we forged an unstoppable alliance. How I long for the classic days of the Mabudachi Trio!"

A bell rings, and Ayame turns to look in the direction at the sound. At the cash register, a boy stands with his hands full of cds. His back is to me, but his hair is orange.

You know what? Fine. Everyone seems to have some connection to Ayame; it makes as much sense as any of it that Kyo would shop here.

Ayame dances off the make the sale, and Britt goes to talk to Kyo. I decide to be grateful for the moment of peace and sort through the c.d.s, which there really is a good selection of. A lot of lesser-known bands, many I though no one else had ever heard of, many I haven't heard of. Selections from China, Japan, Korea, France, Germany... I lose track of all the signs listed on the foreign shelf, but there's even a Nigerian section with ten or so different c.d.s.

I wasn't planning on buying anything, but before I know it I'm holding about ten cases. I don't even own a c.d. player. I force myself to put most of them back, but some are so rare I can't bring myself to do it because I might never see them again. I end up resolved to buy only these three – they're fairly priced, but I'll still be out fourty dollars. I just won't buy clothes for a while, and I'll stick to the cheap foods.

There's a used c.d. player for sale at the front, complete with headphones.

I can't help it. I have to listen to these.

Goodbye, fifty dollars.

Ayame is overjoyed as I pay. "You'll like these songs. I remember listening to them when I was your age. Hatori got you into them, did he?"

"Sort of," I say.

He's right – Hatori was the one who first got me into older music, or music in general. For years I lived off of his old c.d.s and similar music that fans of those bands recommended to me over the internet.

I slip a disk into the player and put the headphones on as soon as he hands it over. The sound quality isn't great, but the music is. The drums and guitars immediately start up, and though the musicians are not that technically skilled, the rhythm is energizing. There's singing in that early nineties way, like they're saying everything that comes into their heads at the moment and the beat and the emotion put into the syllables somehow make it work.

I look up at some of the band posters covering the walls, seeing how they've changed. Faded, geometric patterns and things that looked like optical illusions, black and white portraits of musicians, wild-haired punks in torn clothes, long haired men and short haired women both with giant glasses, two pianists in theatrical make-up and formal wear, graffiti-styled band names. Bricks. Hearts. Headphones. Fists. Birds. Balloons.

Someone touches my shoulder. I turn to see Tohru. I unplug my headphones.

"I just thought of something," she says. "Are you doing anything over the holidays?"

"Not that I have planned."

"If you want you could come over with to my house. My cousins and my grandfather will be there, we usually have a sort of get-together at this time of year."

"Thanks – I wouldn't be, like, intruding on your family moment?"

She shakes her head. "No. It would be good, actually. My cousins don't talk to me very much, so if you were there it would make the day... better."

"Then I'll be there."

She hugs me. "I'm glad you came with us today."

"Me too."

**-/-/-/-**

**Kyo:**

At first, when I discovered Flamingoes through a day of teenaged wandering, I wasn't sure I'd come back. Ayame was... intense. Like, loud. And weird. And loudly weird.

But the music was amazing.

After what happened with the football team, I'd officially given up on trying to impress people. It was all suddenly spelled out to me – why was I trying to be like the people who wanted to hurt me? Who cared about people who didn't care about anything or anyone?

My self-defense classes were going well. The teacher was a long-haired man in his late twenties, an immigrant from Japan. He was really cool, though. He said I could call him by his name, Kazuma, but one day I was watching a martial arts movie where someone calls his instructor Shishou, so I'd taken to calling him that. More about him later.

I'd taken to listening to all the weird music I wanted, since I no longer had to fake interest in the bands other people were into. Like, there was a lot of crap to sort through with obscure bands, but when I found something good it was really, really good. All the most hardcore bands went pretty much unnoticed by the mainstream, 'cause they didn't get played on the radio.

Yeah, Ayame freaked me out a bit when I came to look around. He talks _way _too much, and I can't stand empty noise. But I got used to him. And now I can't picture this place without him, or my life without this place.

He's having some rent problems, though. He hasn't said so outright, but I figured it out. He didn't have electricity here for several weeks, and had to make a fire. It turned out the chimney was blocked, so the whole place filled with thick smoke and was then closed for several days. He had some professionals come over to appraise how much it would be to fix the chimney, and I saw him flinch as they gave their figure.

So when the store reopened, everyone who came in here had to wear thick coats. I was surprised when I got here today to find the electricity on. I've been here a few hours, just talking with Ayame. Once you get past the strangeness, he does have stuff to say, and if you're in the right mood to listen, it's pretty okay. Don't get me wrong, he still irks me sometimes, but... I don't hate him. He knows stuff about music, and about being yourself. It just happens that himself is a guy who overflows with words.

Some people come in and he rushes to greet them. I look to see Tohru, Britt, some of Tohru's friends, and – oh joy – Akito.

I don't hate Akito either, at least not the same way I hate Yuki. But I don't get him. He's distant, like we're all part of some joke he's orchestrating and refuses to let us in on. I guess it's because he's the opposite of Ayame, and of what I'm trying to be – he's not honest. I have no idea who he is.

I turn away from them, busying myself sorting through the folk metal section. Ayame isn't into metal, but he still carries it. He says it should be available to people who appreciate it. I helped him decide what bands to order in, since I listen to way too much of it. He says that, if business goes well, he'll hire me here. I think business going well is a euphemism for the store not closing down.

"Hey," says Britt.

"Hi."

"Been here long?"

"All day."

"Cool."

"You hang out with them?"

"I am today."

I nod. I look towards Tohru and Akito. They're certainly friendly. "Are they going out?"

"Why don't you ask them?"

"Because..." I think about it. "I don't know."

"Yeah, I know what you mean," she says. "I'm not sure if they are either. Would it bother you if they were?"

"A bit."

"Why?"

"I can't figure out who Akito is."

Britt smiles. "It's sweet how you care about your friends so much. I think, maybe, Akito can't figure out who Akito is either. These things take time."

**-/-/-/-**

**Akito:**

I wave as the train I've stepped off glides away, streetlights bouncing orange off the windows. It's cold as I walk back, it's snowed again and I sink into it as I move, wet through my pants and shoes, but the cold isn't deep.

I stomp the light, clean crystals off on the mat in the doorway to my building, then take the stairs to my room. There's something white tied to the handle and something blue on the ground. As I get closer, I find a pair of blue rainboots standing neatly by the door. I untie the long, white streams of fabric. My curtains.

Jazzy was here.

**-/-/-/-**

**Kyo:**

A kid in a black suit standing  
fists clenched in a sea of  
stiff standing adults whispers  
and quiet. Eyes averted  
breath caught the floor too  
clean. Illusions lost and boxed,  
life gone. My chest crushing  
my heart. A speech that  
can't pass my thick numb  
cold skin. Turning, legs crashing  
through the quiet, door open  
and out. Whispers fading  
into wind.

The night is  
flashes between empty space  
and burning lungs. City lights  
sprawled  
out before me as I stood  
on a hill. Telephone lines. Buildings.  
Strangers avoiding looking at me.  
A clerk at a 7-11 out on her  
smoke break, her eyebrow  
piercing glinting as she offered  
me a sandwich she  
didn't make me pay for,  
which I accepted.  
The sun coming  
up. Dragging  
myself back home and  
falling asleep and apart in  
my room. It wasn't  
far, my house from  
where I ended up.  
Most of the paths  
here seem to go in  
circles.


	12. XI: Unless It's Kicks

**Deconstruction  
XI: Unless It's Kicks**

-/-/-

A/N: Hi, everyone! I am sorry it's been such a long wait – I was sick for a very long time, then busy with volunteering and camp, then had some issues with depression that kept me from doing very much at all. This chapter turned out better than I expected. The title is from an Okkervil River song, my favorite band at the moment. **Please review - I don't get very many, so the ones I receive are very important to me!**

-/-/-

**Akito:**

Jazzy walks past me in the hall today, acknowledges me with a quick lift of his hand. I keep going, on my way to meet Tohru and Kyo at our usual spot, then turn around, because I know that later I might not be able to do this.

"Hey, " I say, catching up with him, "thanks for returning my stuff."

"No problem," he says. "I wouldn't just take your belongings and not give them back. You're my friend."

"I'm sorry I've been avoiding you." I say it fast, feeling like I'm ripping off a bandaid – unpleasant, but it has to be done.

"It's okay," he says slowly, like he's really thinking about it. "Are you... okay?"

"I think so. Still kind of confused."

"Yeah, I... I would be, too." He pauses. "So... we're cool, now?"

"Yes, I guess we are."

"Awesome." He smiles up at me and I return it.

"Hey, Jazzy!" calls a voice from our – I mean, the old – table.

"Rin!" exclaims Jazzy, running towards her. The two embrace, whirling around, a kaleidoscope of black and light blue.

"Look who I located," says Jazzy, once they've stopped spinning.

Rin looks towards me, says, "Haven't seen you in a while, Akito."

"Hi," I say, unable to come up with anything better under the intensity of her gaze.

"It's nice to have you back."

"I wanted to say hi," I say, aiming for nonchalance. I don't feel about Rin the same way as I do for Tohru, but I can't help but want to impress her. She's just so damn _cool. _

Yuki waves at me from where he's sitting with Haru and Momiji, and I nod my head in acknowledgement. Momiji comes running forward, wraps his arms around my waist, unable to reach much higher as he only comes up to my shoulders.

"Um, hey," I say, awkwardly patting the top of his head.

"I wasn't sure you'd come back!"

"Yeah, I wasn't..." I stop myself before I can finish with "sure either", since it sounds like the wrong thing to say. I let my voice slowly die and hope nobody notices.

"We missed you!"

"I missed you guys, too." This sentence is probably the truest thing I've said all day.

I'd missed them. All of them, their absence felt like a loss. I missed the conversations, the strange outfits, Jazzy's cussing and Rin's aura of leadership. I even missed the personal-space-invasion, and Yuki's annoying helpfulness. That feeling that I now realize was acceptance.

Not to be misunderstood, I love being around Tohru. Even her friends seem quite... fun. If I had to choose between these two groups, I would choose Tohru's without a second thought, even having to put up with Kyo's burning dislike of me.

But maybe I don't have to choose.

(Missed: think of that word. You miss someone, you want them to be there with you. Or you miss an opportunity, you miss a possibility. You mis-step, mis-hear. A mis-take: it could mean to take the wrong thing, to take as fact a reality that never existed. It's also like mist: a fog holding unseeable possibility, or danger. Invisible chance.)

"We were planning on going down to Chinatown next Saturday," says Yuki. "Would you like to come with?"

I have a legitimate excuse. "I'd like to, but Tohru's having a Christmas party that day."

"Oh. Well, have a fun time."

"Thanks. You too."

Jazzy grins and says, "So, is Tohru like your girlfriend now? Spill it."

"Erm, well, she... that is, we..."

Rin laughs. "You're cute when you're frazzled."

"Aww, Akito's turning all red!" says Britt.

"Where did you even come from?" I say to her.

"Magicland." She's dyed her hair black – that's why I didn't see her, it's less eye-catching than the vivid red I've gotten used to associating with her. "Which happens to be in the fashion room, right behind you."

"Did you try on the grad dresses I made you?" says Rin.

"Uh huh," nods Britt.

"And?"

"I like them but... I don't know, my hair's going to be green, and I think the colours would clash –"

"You're dyeing it again?" says Yuki. "Aren't you afraid it's going to fall out?"

"Nope," says Britt. "Jazzy dyes his hair all the time, and it's all still there."

"Speaking of me!" says Jazzy loudly, standing up on the table, "I believe I was in the process of making Akito uncomfortable about his personal life, before I was INTERRUPTED." He glares purposefully at everyone in turn.

"Please get down from there before you step in my noodles," says Haru.

"Your wish is my command – whoa," Jazzy attempts to bow causing the table to shake and water to slosh over the edge of Haru's soup bowl, before he nimbly hops down.

Haru stares resignedly down at his meal, then resumes eating.

"Don't mind Jazzy," says Rin. "He's just excited because he's found someone he hasn't bragged about his girlfriend to yet."

"Rin Takahashi, I am shocked and offended that you think so little of me!" Jazzy turns to me and adds, "But now that she mentions it, yes, I do have a girlfriend now. Her name is Melissa and she is stupendous and I think one day you should meet her and see how stupendous she is."

"Where did you guys meet?" I ask, a bit taken aback. For some reason, even though Jazzy is always talking about his exes, the thought of him actually being in a relationship, with anyone, seems odd to me.

"Tsuu T'ina youth group."

I look at Jazzy, take in his blue eyes and pale skin. "You're Native?"

"Nope, I just go to the youth group."

"Oh. Cool."

"I know, I'm great."

"So what you were saying, Akito," says Rin, "is that Tohru isn't officially your girlfriend, but it looks like it's going that way."

"That's – yeah. Exactly. How did you know?"

"I'm perceptive about these things. For instance –" she turns to Haru, "it's obvious that you're madly in love with me."

Haru looks up, gulps down his noodles. "I..."

Rin laughs. "I'm kidding, man."

"Oh," says Haru.

"Your face when I said that – ah, it was great."

"Speaking of Tohru," I say, "I should probably go find her."

"Isn't that her over there?" says Jazzy. My eyes follow the direction he's pointing. He's right, and she's walking towards us. How long did I keep her waiting?

"Hi, Tohru," I say, walking over to her. "Sorry about being late, I was just about to come over to where we usually meet."

"No worries!" says Tohru, "I knew you sometimes came here with friends, so I came inside and heard your voice."

"Do you think they always talk to each other like they're narrating something?" Jazzy says in the background. "'Cause if they do, it's kind of hot. Is that just me?"

"Well, let's go outside, " I say to Tohru.

"Are you sure?" she says. "You haven't spoken to your friends in a while, have you? I don't want to interrupt if you need to catch up –"

"Nope, it's fine let's –"

"Hey," says Rin. She extends a hand to Tohru. "I'm Rin. Great to meet you."

"You too!" says Tohru, smiling brightly and shaking her hand. "I'm Tohru."

"I've heard so much about you. Hey, Akito, are you gonna introduce her to your friends or should I?"

"I'll do it." I say.

I go through the crowd: Jazzy, Yuki, Haru, Momiji. Jazzy shakes her hand and says, "Awesome," Yuki and Haru say "Nice to meet you", and Momiji promptly hugs her.

As I'm observing the commotion, marvelling that no one has said anything shockingly inappropriate yet, I remember something. "Tohru," I say, "I don't think I have your address yet."

"Oh, right!" she says, and Momiji releases her.

"I've got some paper if you need to write it down," he says.

"Thank you, that would be perfect! By the way, my family's having a Christmas party next weekend, if anyone would be interested in coming."

A chorus of "sure"s and "sounds fun!"s ring out.

"But I thought you guys were going to Chinatown," I say.

"Eh, we can do that anytime," says Jazzy. "Hey, is it alright if I bring a plus-one?"

"No problem," says Tohru, "my family prepares a lot of food."

I take Tohru aside, say, "Are you _sure _it's okay for so many of my friends to come over?"

"Of course, why wouldn't it be?"

"Well, it's just, I don't want to be a burden."

"It isn't! The more the merrier, right?"

"Yeah," I say, "right."

"Is something wrong?"

It was dumb of me to assume it was going to be just her and I. I mean, what would we even do if it was just us? Alone time would be more awkward than intimate at this point. "Nah, it's fine," I say.

"My grandfather said I could invite as many people as I wanted," says Tohru. "Kyo's coming too."

On second thought, it's probably best if all my other friends show up - so I can spend as little time around Kyo as possible. "Okay, " I say, "yeah, let's invite them. It will be fun."

What was I saying before about not wanting to choose between my friends and my... whoever Tohru is in relation to me?

-/-/-

"Aren't you coming with?"

It's the end of the day and as we left the school Jazzy walked beside me until our paths diverged. Now, a couple meters away, he cocks his thumb in the direction of the bus stop.

"I'm walking," I say.

"Ah."

I turn back to the sidewalk and continue on my way. Fall into the beat of walking, step step step crackling on the air-pocketed ice.

Another set of footsteps beside me. A flash of blue materializes in my peripheral vision. "I'll walk too," explains Jazzy when I turn to him.

"I live kind of far away."

"I know. I live in the same building."

I consider what this means. One, I have no way of separating from him. Two, he's dirt poor. Like me.

It surprises me that I think this. That I have grown used to thinking of myself as poor – growing up, although we were low on funds, that word never would have come into mind. Something about my family that made it not fit, too much pride, too many people, ears everywhere that might hear and report back to the familial center to punish the perpetrator.

And also, strange to think "like me" about someone. I would never admit it aloud, but there have been very few people who ever made me think that.

I am used to feeling like a freak. An outsider. It's hard to think of a time when I haven't thought that, excluding instances where I've been very tired and alone, waking up in total darkness in the middle of the night, forgetting to feel strange, forgetting who I am. I don't identify strongly enough as anything really to pick faces out of a crowd and think, "like me". No strong connections to any culture, style, area, faith, gender. To call myself anything, even in my head, would feel like a lie. Not like me not like me not like me.

Instead, when I look at a crowd, all I can think is, "You wouldn't like me."

That's strangers. And when you feel like this, an incomprehensible outcast, most people stay strangers.

Even yourself.

And a few seconds later, the feeling of being like Jazzy is gone. If he knew I was counting in my head, calculating the calories I will have burned between leaving the school and the time I get home, multiplying by two because I walked this morning as well – he'd run from me. I know it. And for some reason, I find this reassuring.

It's contradictory. Now that I have Tohru, have friends, I shouldn't think like this: planning my disintegration. That's what it is: making sure I take in considerably less calories than I burn, using my own body as fuel. Gradually erasing myself. I don't want to do that anymore. I don't want to cease to exist. There are things I want to accomplish or experience, and ceasing to exist would make that difficult.

But it's hard to break routine, and it hits me with guilt at seemingly random intervals.

I'm hungry.

Step by step, breathing in air that tastes like cars and exhaustion.

"So," says Jazzy, "what kind of music do you like?"

It's a hard question. All kinds would be a lie, but it's a challenge to narrow it down to a specific genre. Nevertheless, I'm grateful for the distraction from my thoughts – the kind of thoughts that, when I'm feeling good, I tell myself I'm forever forbidden from thinking, that they aren't right, they're caused by vitamin deficiencies or imbalanced chemicals or changes in the weather.

"A lot of things," I say, "mostly older stuff."

"Let me guess," says Jazzy. He looks at me over from toe to head, "Siouxsie?"

"Some," I say, surprised.

"I knew it! And... Team Dresch?" I shake my head. "Pansy Division? You, Me And Everyone We Know? The Decemberists?"

At the last one, I say, "Yeah." I'm enjoying this game, the chance to finally meet someone who has actually heard of the music I listen to.

"Heavens To Betsy. Excuse 17. Sleater-Kinney!"

This continues a bit longer, Jazzy growing increasingly accurate, naming some bands that I've never heard of and make a mental note to check out. I'm having so much fun that it takes me several minutes to realize he's naming a lot of riot grrrl music. He has to know I'm a girl. A grrrl. I freeze, all of my muscles suddenly tense, my blood cold.

"What's wrong?" says Jazzy, and it's a second before I process this isn't another band name; he's actually concerned.

"N-nothing," I say. It is nothing. I'd been planning to tell everyone, anyway. No big deal. No thing.

"Your turn to guess for me," says Jazzy.

"Britney Spears," I say as a joke.

"Yup."

"Seriously?"

"Well, it started as a joke, like an ironic thing, when I was younger. But now... I don't know, I think the lyrics are permanently engraved in my brain. I'm not so big on irony anymore, but I get the urge to listen to stuff from when I was young. Nostalgia, I guess. Anyway, gotta get my fix of old pop music." He smiles.

"Linkin Park," I say.

"Again, yup."

"Eminem. Dixie Chicks. Lucinda Williams. Children of Bodom. Basshunter. Emilie Autumn. System of a Down."

I name bands from as opposite genres as I can, then as obscure as I can think of, then just every band I know. For nearly each one, Jazzy gives an affirmative response.

"Wow, you're good at this," he says.

"Is there anything you _don't _listen to?"

He appears to think for a moment. "Nazi stuff, I guess."

"And do you have a favorite branch of music?"

He grins. "Metal. Definitely."

With his blond hair and purple jeans, Jazzy does not look remotely like the stereotypical metalhead.

He must read my mind. "And no, the other fans don't beat me up. We're a pretty accepting group."

"Yeah, I... I know. Back where I used to live, my ex and my – her, friends, they all listened to metal." The sentence comes out awkwardly. I want to take it back,

"Oh, really?" Jazzy sounds genuinely interested. "What are their names? Maybe I know them."

"You wouldn't. They all live in a small town called Middlestream."

"Did you like it there?"

"No."

Jazzy says, "I know what you mean. The city where I grew up - well, it wasn't a good place for me to be." He falls silent and I can think of nothing to say, so I concentrate on walking. We're only a couple blocks away now, swallowed into the landscape of buildings. Icicles dangle from awnings and almost everything is the same grey-blue colour: sky, buildings, snow.

"Do you ever miss it?" says Jazzy abruptly.

"What?"

"Where you used to live."

"Not really. And even if I did, everything that I could miss is gone now."

"Like your family?"

It's only the way he says it that makes me respond the way I do. Only because it's not invasive, or gossipy. It's the voice of someone who's been through this. Who's felt their heart get ripped up by the same type of thoughts, the same feelings.

"Yeah," I say. "Well, it's only my mom. I... I don't miss her. She's probably glad I'm gone. My dad... I've always missed him. He died when I was eight."

"What was he like?" I can see myself reflected in Jazzy's blue eyes. I wonder if I look like him, like my father. What he'd look like now if he hadn't gotten sick. If I could have lived with him. If he would have loved me for who I was. If he'd still love my mother. Could he have kept her from going crazy, kept our family from falling utterly apart? I could have had younger brothers and sisters. Everything could have been different. Better.

"Friendly," I say. "He was quiet, but smart. He laughed a lot. Even when he was sick, he never wanted me to worry. He'd play with me, and when it... when his sickness progressed, and he couldn't get up, couldn't move on his own, lying in bed hooked up to machines to help him breath and his blood to circulate... he'd tell me stories. He always wanted to keep me... happy." It's hard to talk about this. But at the same time it feels right. Like it's about time I finally talked about him, honored his memory or something. I never thought Jazzy would be the one I shared this with.

"Sounds like a good guy," says Jazzy quietly.

"He is. Was. Hey, since we're sharing, what's your family like?" I feel like if I say anything more, I might start crying, and that's not me. That's not who I want to be, how I want to be seen.

"Last I saw my parents, my mom barely talked. I think that was how she coped with living with my dad. I gave up on coping."

"And you live with your sister now?"

"Yeah... well, I ran away from home and showed up on her doorstep. She's really nice – it's amazing, actually, how, like, open she is after where she came from. Like, how trusting. She really does give everyone a chance. Our dad kicked her out."

"Why was your dad so angry?" I ask, because at this point, after every word that has already passed between us, this doesn't seem too personal. And because I wondered that about my own parent, about what was the cause or name of the furious affliction that took hold of my mother and never let her go.

"I always thought it was because of me." He smiles sadly. "Maybe it's ridiculous, I was younger and going through a lot when I still lived there, but I wondered, if I'd been different, if he would have been too. Like, he was always telling me what a failure I was – maybe a normal son could have made him happy."

"People like that would just find something else to be angry about," I say. We're too late for the crossing, and the white figure glowing on the sign changes to a red hand as we draw near."You're not a failure."

"Thanks." He forces a smile. "Anyway, now that I'm living with Sarah and Ty it's not like I have to worry about him anymore."

"I guess we moved for the same reason."

"Yeah. Well, it's always good to know you're not the only one."

I nod.

His voice strange, strangled, he says, "You really believe there was no way I could have changed things?" I notice the shine to his eyes, like he's about to cry at any moment, and I'm horrified because I have no idea how to be the voice of comfort. He looks away, as though embarrassed, and I manage to get a few words out.

"Some people just don't know how to be happy."

"I know," he says. "To be honest, sometimes I think I'm one of those people. But I'm working on it."

"Me too," I say.

And then he hugs me, and I put my arms around him, too, and I know what he's feeling. That need to be close to someone, helping each other to stand. To feel the warmth of a friend and know you're not alone. A brief moment of safety.

I wonder if this was what it was like for Nikki, when she put her arms around me in the hallway as she broke up with me. If she wanted me to know we were still close, could help each other to get through this, through Middlestream, though junior high, through a world that seemed to make no sense at all. Did she want me to tell her it was all right, that she would be okay? Was she trying to tell me that I would be okay?

And now, years later, I don't blame her for what she did to me. I know we were too different, and it never would have worked out. I think I always knew that. And I learned from the experience, we learned from each other; I can't blame her for leaving me, or for wanting to keep her parents. Not when, for so much of my life, I would have given anything to go back to being seven years old, or six, or five. I left our relationship less naive than I'd been, but also, in a way, more trusting. She showed me I didn't need to be alone, that there were people out there who I would be able to connect with and, even just as friends, that's important. I can't think of anything more important.

If I saw her, walking past on the street, I wouldn't turn away. I wouldn't hide my face. I'd have the confidence to go up to her, and to say hello and ask how she's been. I'd say it's been a long time, and I'm sorry I haven't kept in touch. I'd ask her if she wanted to hang out some time, to meet some of my friends and talk about old times and new times and all that had and hadn't changed.

Maybe she'd ask me if I missed Middlestream. And I'd tell her that sometimes I found myself thinking about the people I'd left behind, see their features in the faces of strangers and suddenly wonder if they were all right, and what I would say to them if I ever saw them again.

But of course Nikki doesn't walk past. I'm in a new, strange city, more than a hundred kilometers away. She's not going to be just wandering by, part of the crowd that passes Jazzy and I as we embrace, two confused teenagers in salvation army clothing, two kids far from where they grew up, traveled long distances in hopes of finding better. Holding on to each other in order to finally feel a little less alone.

The light changes and we break apart. The tears in Jazzy's eyes are gone, as quickly as they'd appeared.

"You know," he says, "you should come over. I've mentioned you to Sarah and she wants to meet you – I'm sure you'd like her, I can't believe anyone could _not _like Sarah. We can listen to music and stuff, and discuss what we're getting everyone for Christmas."

"Okay," I say. "That sounds fun."

He grins and I smile back.

As I cross the road, I feel suddenly light, like my feet barely touch the pavement. Like everything I've kept chained it my heart for far too long has been set free, memories and regrets that weighed me down have unfurled wings and flown into the sky, and now shrink with distance as they take their place in the clouds.


	13. XII: Everyone Is Totally Insane

**Deconstruction  
XII: Everyone Is Totally Insane**

-/-/-

A/N: Thank you so much, yellowis4happy, for the reviews. It means more to me than I can say, knowing that someone out there is reading this story and thinking about what I've written. This chapter title is a song by the Dandy Warhols, thank you to my friend Hannah for suggesting it. I have decided that my goal for this school year is to finish this story. There are parts I want to rewrite, mostly those relating to Kyo's past, but I think getting a first draft of the whole story, first chapter to last, takes priority. I finish high school this year and I would like to feel like I have completed something. I know this is only a fanfiction, but it is close to my heart and I started it in tenth grade, and there is a sentimental attachment I have to seeing how much I have changed as a writer and as a person.

This was not at all what I had planned to write for this chapter. I originally hated it, didn't look at it again for three weeks, then read it over again and was surprised that I actually liked it.

-/-/-

**Hatori**

Sometimes Kana would look into space with an intensity that scared me because it served as a forcible reminded of just how powerless I was to protect her. Her eyes would become hard, or sometimes the opposite: sadness would move through them like a living thing, like a sea creature that was always there, that swam through the light in them just below the surface.

I would follow her gaze but there would never be anything there. She was looking into another world, the world of her past. A place there was never any way I could visit.

One day, while on a break from school, we went to visit her parents. I was unsure what to expect, as I typically was about anything regarding Kana. Despite the sadness inside her - which I would dream about saving her from, dream about throwing it all into the ocean, the only place vast enough for an emotion of that scale to safely disperse - she never asked to be saved. She never once complained, not to me or to anybody else I can imagine.

She could sit in a traffic jam, surrounded by the chaos of horns and curses and anger, and turn to me and smile, talk about something small and beautiful that had happened earlier in the day, of an elderly man who held the door for her at the grocery store while her arms were loaded with bags, or of a church downtown that every Sunday gave free food to the homeless and the poor and to anybody else who happened to walk past and look like they would like a meal, regardless of if they attended the church or were even of the same religion. I would turn to her and let her know we were going to be late to wherever we were going to be late to, and she would simply nod and say, "That's alright. Things will fall into place as they're meant to be."

And they did. At least, at the point in life they seemed to. If we missed the movie, we'd go for a walk around downtown, give coins to the people who played their guitars and keyboards and even accordions at stations and sidewalks and benches in the park. We'd watch the sunset reflecting in the mirrored surfaces of buildings, or emitting otherworldly colours from behind the silhouettes of trees, which suddenly looked just as beautiful in winter, spidery and coated in crystalline frost, as they did drenched in the pure greens of summer.

Kana may have been sad, but she was not depressed. She lacked the blunting of senses, the lack of appreciation for life, which were the trademarks of that feeling and that disorder. On the contrary, she possessed an ability to experience joy so authentic and unadulterated that I don't think I've ever seen in anyone else. She could smile often and always without that self-conscious twinge that accompanies the expression on most faces. She could laugh unembarrassedly even when no one else saw a joke – nothing struck her as more amusing that the conversations and events of everyday life. She would hum songs that played in her head, and when she felt like it, let them build into entire songs, singing to herself and to the world, whether we were in our apartment washing the dishes or walking in the hallways to class.

She sang the kind of love songs which would normally be cringe-inducingly cliché, but which she infused with an honestly that transformed them into poetry. They were not love songs to me. At least, not exclusively. I was fully aware of this and didn't mind. They were songs to the world, to everyone she had ever met and to people she might never meet. They were love songs to life. She had a habit of getting the lyrics wrong in strange ways that made them somehow truer. If anyone corrected her, she would thank them and offer a sincere smile, then resume singing the version she had been singing all along.

Kana's whimsical attitude complemented rather than impeded her intelligence. She could talk of philosophy, medicine, psychology with the same enthusiasm in her voice as when she was discussing music or animals. There seemed to be nothing that she did not seek to learn about and understand. For her, being a doctor was a goal because she truly wanted to help people. She wanted to save the world, and there were times when I heard her laugh and saw the sun reflecting in her eyes and had not a trace of a doubt that she was going to do this.

As much as I wanted to take her sadness away, into myself, I know I would have not been able to handle it. If anyone ever said she was a stronger person than I, I would not have denied it.

The thought of finally meeting her parents fascinated me. I was unsure of whether they got along with Kana, although it was hard to imagine anyone not – but I had never seen talk on the phone or write to her family. She mentioned them occasionally and I knew her dad used to be a doctor and her mom a teacher, and both were also very religious and thus used to travel the world on funding from the church, doing charity work and spreading the word of religion. Kana's unsystematic spiritualism and humanism seemed to me like it would clash with the dogma of organized belief, and I'd never seen her engage in any rituals; though, apparently on the spur of the moment, she decided she was going to attend the campus church one Sunday. When I asked her how it went she said it was a beautiful building and the people had been very friendly and warm. Still, I noticed she never went back.

Her parents met us at the airport and helped us with our bags. I was glad to find out that they spoke perfect English and apparently had no interest in verifying that their daughter's boyfriend was officially Japanese enough, as some of my friends had talked about experiencing when they met their own significant other's parents.

Although I took an interest in my culture and had a certain pride in my heritage, I also had a tendency to stumble over my Japanese words when I was nervous, and was self-conscious that my manners were irrevocably western. I was also concerned that my lack of religious foundations – some of my family members set up shrines but it was never a big discussion point, and although my aunt and uncle, with whom Akito lived, observed Christmas, their holiday was more of an occasion to reunite with family than it was of spiritual significance – would be an issue. (Even though Kana's family was Christian, for some reason I felt that people of one religion would be able to accept someone of another system of faith than someone who wasn't at all sure what he believed.) But soon after entering the house, all my fears of such an issue evaporated.

After a car ride where I was asked about school and what it was like in Ottawa (where Kana and I were enrolled at the time) and if we planned on coming back in the summer, I was feeling quite relaxed. Kana's mother, a woman named Miranda, did most of the talking, and the tone was conversational rather than interrogatory. Miranda was petit with shining dark eyes and shoulder-length black hair streaked with grey, aged in the elegant way of someone who adapts the years of life to her look rather than trying to turn back the clock. I did notice, however, that when she absentmindedly ran her hand through her hair, the curtain of it which had hidden her cheek was pushed back to reveal a long splash of dark scar tissue. Severe burn marks. I then took into account that she wore concealing clothing and walked with a cane, and I wondered what had happened to her and how serious the damage was. I made no mention of it, of course – it was much too personal to bring up, and she would no doubt be sad to be defined by such a long-ago, unfortunate event.

Her husband, Shinji, did the driving. He did not talk very much, but was not unfriendly either. I thought he must have been concentrating very hard on his driving, but later learned that he was simply a quiet man. He had a serious face and a full head of hair, though it was snow-white and needed to be cut.

Kana was quiet around her parents – in fact, I saw a lot of similarities in the behavior of her father and her at the time. She kept a neutral expression and responded politely to the questions from her mother, which were far fewer than the number directed at me. Whatever the situation was between Kana and her parents, her parents understood and seemed not to question it.

Shinji pulled into the driveway of a tall, white house. We carried the suitcases up to the porch and waited as the key rattled in the lock. And then we stepped inside, and I felt like a new world had been opened to me.

I can still see it now, when I close my eyes. The walls are covered in paintings and woodcuts, and stone statues of varied sizes cast reflections in the polished wood floor. I tell Miranda and Shinji that they have a beautiful house, and Miranda thanks me and says that we are going to order in tonight if that is alright, that Kana and I are probably tired from jet lag and should get our rest. I thank them and Kana leads me to the guest room.

As we proceed down the hallway I take a closer look at one of the statues and am bemused to see the stone eyes of a Hindu goddess looking back at me. As I examine the other artworks, I realize that they are in fact also tributes to various beliefs – a replica of The Last Supper, a jade Buddha, a dreamcatcher, a Shinto shrine, and myriad others I don't recognize.

I climb the stairs to the room and when Kana and I are inside with the door shut behind us, I ask, "Why does your family have so many different religious objects?"

Kana thinks about this. "To remind my mom of her faith, I suppose. For luck. And because she likes them."

"But I thought she was Christian."

"She is. She's also many other things."

"Don't they contradict?"

"Not if you think of them a certain way."

I will think more on that answer later in the night, while I am lying in bed with statues of saints and goddesses watching over me and a glass ornament in front of the window to capture evil energy that might come in from outside. I will think of it and it will lead to thinking of Kana, as nearly all my thoughts seem to these days and all days after, wondering if she is asleep in the room across the hall and, if so, if the dreamcatcher on her door is offering any protection from the nightmares that have plagued her for as long as I've known her. I find it hard to believe.

Thinking of her crying and thrashing in her sleep, I find it hard to believe a lot of things. Because if anyone in the world knows the right way of thinking of things, the certain way that makes the world make sense, it should be her. And since she isn't immune to pain and chaos and sadness, it makes me, alone and in the dark, start to think that the only way to think without contradictions is not to think at all.

"What about your dad?" I ask. "Does he have an opinion on them?"

"He doesn't mind," says Kana. "He doesn't believe in very much, but he doesn't stop others from it."

"And you?"

"I think the care and thought put into them is beautiful." She touches a green orb hanging in front of the window, turns it in her hand so that the last of the sunlight from outside filters through it and wavers on the walls. "To be able to dedicate your energy to making something you believe in, and share it with someone else whom it matters to… it's a wonderful idea."

That night, when I'm stuck in the limbo between dreaming and dark but wakeful thoughts, I hear her call for me. If I'd been fully conscious I'd know it wasn't really for me – it never is, the land of her nightmares are a place I can never touch, a place my name would never exist. But I think it is me she calls for, and I go into her room, where she is tossing and turning, and I touch her arm and talk to her, tell her I am there and that I will help and she is safe, and as we sleeptalk I dream that I reassure her, that I calm her down – I know it must be a dream because nothing I have done has ever helped in real life.

And the next morning I wake up beside her, afraid her parents will see me leaving her room so I try to sneak out the second I regain consciousness, hoping that I'm the first one up and can get back to my room before I am seen and assumptions are made. But she mumbles in her sleep and grasps my hand – not with the harsh grip she uses when she has a nightmare, but with a gentle, worn out request that I stay. So I do. I lean into the warmth of her body and the scent of her hair, and am soon asleep again, content knowing that she is finally sleeping peacefully.

Later that day, Kana and Miranda go shopping and Shinji suggests that the two of us go swimming. I know little about the sport but he is an expert and explains he doesn't mind teaching me. I find out this isn't simply basic politeness, but in fact the truth – his face lights up as he explains how to cast the line and reel it in, the count of the rhythm to attract the fish. It's slow but the weather is good and the anticipation becomes as exciting as the catch.

Shinji talks to me occasionally as we stand beside the river and listen to the birds and wind. "You've been together with Kana a long time now," he says.

"Yes. Almost three years."

He nods. "Do you love her?"

"Yes." Kana was my definition of love. Without her, I couldn't imagine being able to function like a complete person. I already knew then. Even though it felt like she had been with me as long as I'd been alive, I was already terrified of losing her. Even though there was a part of me that knew she would never be mine, never be anybody's. She couldn't belong to any one person – she did what she felt she should, and no one could hold her down.

She seemed to reside in a world that was distant and yet more real than this one. I thought of her as though she was a diver, seeing the world underwater, webs of light swaying over colourful anemones and such otherworldly creatures, everything calm and brilliant, even ordinary things transformed into objects of fascination by the element of displacement.

At least, that was how she made me feel. I had started to live underwater as well, to be close to her. And though I couldn't journey as deep as she did, though I had to frequently come up for air into a world made boring by routine and dismissal, I had never been more content than to live my life this way. If the phone rang unanswered because its sound took too long to reach us through the water in our ears, I learned not to mind. If it was important, they would call back later. Everything would fall into place.

Shinji nods. A hawk bursts from the canopy above us, circles, then flies away, the details of its feathers lit by the sun. I watch it shrink to a speck, then out of sight.

"I forgot what it was like here," I say.

"I heard an interesting story once," says Shinji.

I nod at him to continue, but he stares off into the lake, again reminding me of Kana.

"What was it?" I say.

He looks at me as if a bit startled that I'm still there, then his eyes go distant again. "There was a woman," he says. "She volunteered for an experiment, back in the nineteen-sixties, when such things were legal. She was given a drug and asked where she was, to which she responded, 'I am in ancient Greece'. When they asked what she was doing, she explained that she was talking to Socrates.

"When they asked what he was saying, she began to talk in what sounded like perfect Greek. This meeting was recorded, and when the tape was given to a linguist, he verified that she was speaking Greek – however, it wasn't the ancient language, but a modern dialect: the words to a popular song. This woman had never been to Greece in her life. She had heard the song in a restaurant and remembered it perfectly for all that time, never realizing it. Did you hear about this in medical school?"

"No," I say, fascinated. Had I heard the story years before, I would have doubted it on the spot, either dismissed it or launched into research to find out what really happened. But that day, I believed it. I still believe it. Because I have met patients who cannot remember their names, whose vocabularies have diminished to the point of impairing basic communication, but who can play the piano at a concert level, complex emotions and ideas reverberating through the room with each touch of a key. Because I have seen the strange connections the human brain is capable of making, the information that can be locked away and released at seemingly random moments. Because I met Kana.

"It's probably not the kind of thing they teach in schools."

"Not usually," I say.

We lapse into silence again, which I don't mind. I catch a large fish and Shinji grins, guides me in unhooking it. I try to understand why Kana does not talk about her family more often. I think about it in the quiet, with nothing to interfere with my thoughts. Shinji and Miranda both seem to be kind people, and I can see elements of Kana in them, Shinji especially but also in Miranda's consideration and way of putting other people at ease. All I can come up with is the unknown event that happened so many years ago, the disaster which plagues Kana's dreams. That left Miranda covered in burns. I wonder if this occurrence is what caused Miranda's cluttered spirituality and Shinji's loss of faith.

I try to tactfully bring up the subject. It isn't simply out of selfish curiosity – Shinji has lived with Kana longer than I have, he must know what to do about this, how to help. "Kana had one of her nightmares last night," I say.

He looks at me and nods once, slowly. "I heard."

"Is she… Is there any way I could help her?"

He sighs. "Kana has what's known as posttraumatic stress disorder. I'm sure you've heard of it."

"I have." The truth was, I'd already assumed that was what she was suffering from. What I was more concerned about was whether I could do anything about it.

"We've tried various treatments over the years, and she made progress. It's much better than it was. But after a point it stopped improving. The doctors we've seen weren't able to offer any cure for her dreams."

"So I… there's no way I could help her?"

"I didn't say that. When you comforted her last night, did that help?"

"I'm not sure. It's never helped in the past."

"She looked well-rested this morning." He adjusts the reel of his rod, and I listen to the whir of the device. When he is done, he says, "Hatori… I think it's good that she has you in her life. She's so happy now." And again, he smiles; and for the first time I notice the sadness in his expression, the vulnerability in his eyes. And I think that maybe he sees me as I see him, as holding so much insight into Kana's life, as being able to make an impact on her, as being close to the magic secret to saving her from her thoughts. And maybe he feels the same way I do, the same sense of powerlessness, of distance from her. Maybe neither of us will ever know, I think, what it is like to be so far away.

Over a year will have passed when I hear on the radio about a country where copper is illegal. Not because it would be used for any harmful purposes, but because it is valuable. Because in return for obtaining it, a person could get money, could finally afford food shelter medicine basic clothing basic safety the cost of daily living; because, to own anything valuable puts one at risk of attack by another desperate starving poverty stricken neighbor.

I will hear on the radio of children slicing up their fingers disassembling computer monitors to tear metal from the wires, children inhaling toxins, burning computer to gather metal, the thick black clouds of our discarded technology rendered obsolete year after year and hidden off screen to ruin the air and their lungs; as we switch over to a newer model, assured that there will always be a new model and wrapping ourselves in the comfort that we are making _progress_ there will

ALWAYS

be a New Model enhanced and upgraded with bugs worked out virus resistant firewalls and passwords **wires **screens _ENTERTAINMENT _just like there will (always) be new starving desperate children willing –

no, eager –

to dig through the mess we've shoved out of sight and out of mind, to black their lungs and spill their blood, to sacrifice a thousand days of slow starvation, of deteriorating fat,protein,muscle,brain cells, in return for a cancerous cough and a chance for a meal that day.

I am in the car when I hear about this and I will need to pull over, my hands shaking on the steering wheel as images flood my mind. All my senses flood. I am sure I can smell the burning plastic, so sure that my throat constricts and I start to cough and choke, trying to expel the horrible air from my body. And then it's not just the experiences of these children from a country I've never seen that are overflowing into my own awareness – it's her.

The feel of her fingers laced in mine, her breath on my neck, the smell of her hair, the way she walked. The flash of her eyes, the sound of her laugh, her cries in the night, running my hands through her hair. The curve of her nose, her waist, her lips, tears rolling down her face that ripped at my heart and that I would dry for her while I sat sleepless beside her. Her walking over cushions of crackling red leaves in the fall, her tackling me with a hug, late nights up studying and drinking tea, the feel of kissing her. It's her it's her it's her it's her, I think it until the sounds mean nothing, the words mean nothing, no thing, and I want to play an instrument and make noise noise noise noise just to get all this chaos inside me out into the air because now she's farther from me than ever and I don't want to live in now now nowhere.

I feel like I am falling.

I have no idea if that country was the country where whatever happened to her took place. But I know that it is far away, and people are being hurt, and she would care. She always cares. When I feel like I will explode, a _need _to break free of my skin and sprout wings and fly across the ocean and do _something, anything, _because there is so much out there, the world is flooding my senses and I feel like everyone, **like the hopes and dreams and pain and confusion of everyone in the world is pouring all at once into my mind and I can't handle it** but at the same time it's burningly awakening **and I never** want to go to sleep **again**(I grip the steering wheel)**, when I care **_**so much**_** it hurts and I can't tell if it is physical or emotional or psychological or even spiritual**, this hurt, **because really it ****doesn't** feel like **there is a ****difference**: I know that's what she was feeling every day.

I hold on so hard.


	14. XIII: Paper Tigers

Thank you, yellowis4happy, for the review on the last chapter! I am done exams for a while, so more updates should be up soon. This was one of the harder chapters to write, but I think it turned out pretty well. Thank you for reading!

Title is a song by The Caesars. The song Jazzy plays is _Red _by Moe Clarke.

Deconstruction  
XIII: Paper Tigers

**Akito**

A woman in a green sweater and long grey skirt answers the door to Jazzy's apartment. "Oh, hello," she says. She has the type of wide-open brown eyes that make a person look permanently surprised. "You're... Akito, right?"

"Yes," I say.

"Please come in." She steps back to let Jazzy and I through the doorway. "I'm Sarah. Jazzy's, sister."

Jazzy grins. As he stands beside her, I search for a family resemblance. They both have the same pale skin, although with her dark brown hair, the same as Jazzy's roots, it looks somehow more extreme on her, like a health issue rather than a fashion statement. She's about two inches shorter and at least five years older than him, with slight shadows under her eyes but a welcoming smile.

It's strange to find out that the person Jazzy admires so much is completely different from himself. Everything about her is down to earth, her quiet calm voice and her clothes, her sweater like faded leaves and skirt like bark or rushing water. And then Jazzy, who seems to have dropped in from another planet, refugee from a world of neon and noise. I wonder if Sarah is aware of his admiration.

"When does Ty get home?" says Jazzy.

"He said six-thirty. Akito, are you staying for dinner?"

"You should," says Jazzy to me.

"Well, um, if it's alright," I say.

"Why wouldn't it be?' says Jazzy. "Come on, I'll give you a tour of my residence."

Since all the apartments in the complex are basically the same design, the tour doesn't take long. The apartment manages to be both chaotic and controlled, objects stacked on top of each other in ways that look meaningful but which I can't grasp the logic behind. Mountains of books, magazines about music and others about sports, folded clothing, a refrigerator and washing machine, telephone and laptop computer, cds, shoeboxes; all huddled together like a colony of hibernating creatures.

"This is my room," says Jazzy, throwing open a paint-spattered door. Inside, the walls (where they can be seen past a kaleidoscope of anime and band posters) are painted black and a computer hums on a desk. Comic books and more music magazines obscure the floor. The last of the sun's washed-out rays filter between skyscrapers into a small square window above the desk.

"It's pretty much a mess," he says, tipping a pile of magazines off the only chair and gesturing for me to sit down, taking a seat himself at the edge of a bed with planet-decorated covers.

"I like it," I say. Unlike my apartment, which is about as generic as they come, Jazzy's room actually looks like someone lives in it. Someone unafraid to put his interests, his life, on display to visitors.

"Nice computer," I say.

"Thanks," he says. "I had to save up for ages to get it. If you still don't have one, you could stop by sometimes to use it, like for homework and stuff."

"I usually just handwrite… but yeah, maybe sometime." It's been years since I've used a computer outside of school. My aunt and uncle didn't have one, and I got used to it. In some ways, I preferred not to use one – when I had one, I'd lose hours a day, living in a world I couldn't touch, losing the little faith I had in humanity by watching other people make fools of themselves, over and over.

I know it wasn't all like that. There was an abundance of music, art, news articles, support groups – of course there was. But I'm the type to get fixated on the worst of everything.

"Want some music, by the way?" says Jazzy, sliding the keyboard towards himself.

"Alright."

He presses a button and the machine lights up. In a stream of clicks and keystrokes, programs dance across the screen too fast to keep track. Then, instead of just clicks, a new sound: clatter, shake, tumble of grain over grain in the steady bass metronome of a shaker-egg (it seems like there should be a more technical name for it, but nothing comes to mind).

Then another instrument joins in, slowly builds up – no, it's a voice, wordless vocalizing. Several voices, harmonizing, whispering, speaking words in a language I don't understand, then another singing in English. It should be chaotic, but the layers support each other, create a landscape of sound like nothing I've ever heard. I feel like, if I close my eyes, I will be able to see it, touch it, feel it. No, I already feel it. It's the kind of music that wraps around you like the waves of a river and holds you in its sway.

"I thought you'd like this song," says Jazzy, with a smile.

"I'm just predictable, I suppose."

"Hardly. But I play music for everyone, and it felt like it was about time I found someone who shared my taste in the weird stuff." From the way he says "weird", it seems to be synonymous with "good" in his vocabulary. Like it's an entirely different word than the one used on me by giggling cliques in junior high, or by That Woman whenever I did something particularly un-girl-like.

"What's so weird about it?' I say.

"Listen."

A few seconds later, I say, "You mean because it's about pine beetles?"

He shakes his head, with a small smile and looking as though as though he's fighting the urge to cry out some astounding answer.

I close my eyes. Three verses later, I exclaim, "They're the same! The humming person, and the whispering, and the singers – they're all one person!"

He raises his hand for a high-five and I accept.

Song after song reverberate through the room as the sun sinks behind the canopy of buildings, but it seems to take no time at all. Jazzy has everything from X-Ray Spex to The Arctic Monkeys on his computer, and when I start suggesting songs he might like, we search up music videos of them. He shows me a photo of Melissa, who turns out to be a pretty, short-haired girl with bright brown eyes.

"I can't wait for you and our friends to meet her," says Jazzy. "I know everyone's sick of me going on and on about Melissa, but you'll understand her awesomeness when you meet her. And it's not like I don't brag all about you guys to her too."

"Um, thank you," I say, embarrassed. Even though I work incessantly for academic praise, hearing positive things from people my own age feels weird, like I'm misinterpreting something.

Of course, the time-slip has to come to a screeching halt eventually. "Hey, um, by the way," says Jazzy, "I figure I should ask this – what pronoun do you prefer?"

I freeze. Heart, lungs, blood, skin, everything goes cold. It must be a set-up, some elaborate prank to mock me (calm down, I tell myself, you're being irrational, and even if this is an insult, don't let it get to you, don't let him see he can hurt you, don't you dare). I should have known this was coming – or should I? Expect this? Is this a question I'm going to have to get used to answering? More importantly, what _is _my answer?

"Oh, fuck, I'm sorry." Jazzy rakes his fingers through his hair. "I didn't mean to make you uncomfortable. That was an attempt to _avoid _awkwardness, believe it or not. If you haven't noticed yet, my sense of tact is not so existent."

"No… it's okay," I say. I hear myself laugh – a sharp, small, awkward sound, made to fill the silence, nothing to do with anything being funny. Not tough and masculine, nor pretty and feminine. Sexless, unsexy noise. "I'm, uh, not used to having any choice in the matter."

"We're friends," says Jazzy. "I just think it's polite to call you what you're most comfortable with."

Since when was I _ever _comfortable? Almost as far back as I can remember, I've felt like, when people look at me, they're seeing a mirage. Someone completely different from the face that looks back at me in the mirror, this artificial construct that, eventually, they're going to catch on to. And I hate that I care what they think, hate that I feel like I owe them something, these strangers and their assumptions.

Even people I don't like, I still feel like I have to put on a show, not disappoint them. Living as a guy, being viewed as male – it doesn't stop this feeling, the one like I want to crawl out of my skin and become someone entirely different, or become the ground, the roots of a tree, hide away from the sun until I can't see or think or feel. But it does make me feel like slightly less of a disappointment. Less like a mistake, some random, genetic typo.

"To be honest," I say, "I don't know what I feel comfortable with."

I look at him, daring him – say something stupid, fight me, please fight me. Do something, stare or glare or cringe, some ignorant expression to make me hate you. Do the wrong thing. Piss me off. Because it's easier than exposing myself like this, easier than having to answer the thousand questions that spring up like weeds from the spores of that one you asked. This. Is. Me. And I'm not exactly sure who that is, or if I want to find out. Your honesty scares me, because if I was honest like you, I'm afraid of what I would learn.

In his expression I see nothing but concern. Acceptance. Interest, but understanding.

I take a deep breath and go on. The second I permit myself to talk about this, all the thoughts that have been circling my brain come spilling out. "I came from one of those towns where everyone kind of knew each other. They knew I was a… a girl, and they knew I dated girls. Well, one girl. Some people had a problem with us, but most ignored it. I don't know if this was acceptance or if they just didn't take us seriously.

"Then, when I came here, people just assumed from the way I looked that I was a guy. And… I really didn't mind that. I felt safer like this, and I preferred the way people acted around me – like, more direct, and they didn't expect me to talk as much. They said what was on their mind, even if it was insulting, because they saw me as strong enough to take it. And I liked that, I was so sick of feeling weak all the time.

"The whole reason I came to this city was to get away from my old life, and this seemed like too perfect a way to do it. A total new identity. If I'd tried to be socially accepted as a girl, I'd have to modify my behavior a huge amount, keep a constant check on myself, and I know sooner or later I'd slip up and be "the weird one" again. As a guy, I only have to remind myself occasionally. Truthfully, though? Either way I'm going to end up feeling like a liar. Or like a lie."

The room is quiet. I listen to the computer's sounds as I try to concentrate on something besides my racing heartbeat. Then Jazzy says, "If it counts for anything, I don't think you're a liar, or a lie."

"Thanks," I say, unable to meet his gaze.

"Really. If you were a liar, I don't think you'd be able to say any of that. I think… I think you're brave."

"I'm a freak."

"So am I. We can start a club."

I smile despite myself. I guess I did forget I was talking to the blue-haired guy who wears makeup… with sparkles in it.

"I'm guessing I don't have to tell you not to mention this stuff to anyone," I say.

"Of course. Just wondering, does anyone else know?"

"Tohru and some of her friends. Well, sort of. You're the only one I've really explained it to. And everyone else here just thinks I'm a normal guy, so I guess if you have to say something about me, just go along with that until I figure this out. If I ever do, that is."

"You don't have to rush. It's a tough issue," says Jazzy. He stares out the window. "You know, I always found it strange – everyone gets put in box A or box B, gets rules to follow for how to act and dress and interact, all based on something they had no choice in. But most people go through the day never thinking about this sort of thing, or questioning it."

"They're lucky," I say. Ridiculously lucky.

"Maybe," says Jazzy. "But I think in some ways they miss out, seeing in black and white. Losing out on the whole in-between space."

"I guess you've thought about this too, then."

"I like seeing different perspectives. You know, if you were to write something like what you just said, I bet people would be interested. We could put it in the book."

"Book?"

His eyes widen. "Right, Yuki didn't get a chance to tell you! Well, allow me to fill you in."

-/-/-

"That's crazy," I say.

"I know." Jazzy grins.

"No – really. What good do you think is going to come of it?"

"Let me think – our art gets seen. Our names get out there. And people think about what we've done, what we've created."

"You'll just end up in trouble! It will go into your records as vandalism, misusing school resources."

I expect Jazzy to roll his eyes but instead he stands up. Is he going to walk out on me? "Come on," he says. I follow him from the room, then out the apartment door. "Back in a minute," he says to Sarah, "I'm just showing Akito the roof."

Our footsteps clang as we ascend a metal stairway. It's a long flight – I feel the soreness in my legs left over from Athletic Advancement. He turns the handle of a paint-spattered door at the top. When the door stays closed, he rams his body into it. Finally it gives, creaking on its hinges.

"This is my favorite memory," says Jazzy.

As we step out onto the clear, cold air of the roof, it takes me a few minutes to see what he is referring to. There's a fence around the area, rusted chain-link. The sky is dark, it surprises me how much so, a thick, pure blue, painted layer upon layer so that some areas are nearly black.

The moon is huge, white, near-full, craters clearly visible. I've never been able to see a face in it, only an otherworldly, barren landscape. Beautiful in its own way.

I feel as though I've been exposed, the same way as film. Filled with light, taking on the colour of everything around me, the air touching my skin for the first time in ages, a barrier between my surroundings and I stripped away. It's okay to feel awe for the moon, there's no shame in that. Not after you've just told the story of your life.

I can see why people would think wolves howl at the moon – they don't really, they call to each other, but we do our best to put things into terms we understand, even forces of nature. I think people are secretly the ones who want to howl, senselessly release all their noise at this alabaster otherworld too far away for it to possibly reach.

The moon is low in the sky. It looks like the fence is in front of it, covering it.

I follow the moonlight, rippling off the river in the distance, not yet frozen over. Off windows reflected in windows, the sides of buildings polished into infinity mirrors. Off the few untarnished spikes of the barbed wire. Off the glitter under my feet.

_The city was all lit up_

My eyes find words in the twisting calligraphy swirling below me. Red and orange paint with sparkles in it, leading into purple paint.

_With multicoloured flames_

The words seem to move, the way they sparkle. Like they're alive. Like waves, or like flames. The purple and blue in the background, it has designs in it, more linear than the letters. Sidewalks. And buildings. I look up again, then back at the art. It's this city. This view. All these views, different angles of this scene juxtaposed in an impossible perspective.

"You can see what changed," says Jazzy. "This was a few years ago that Rin and I drew this. There are more buildings now. And some places closed down." He sits, traces his finger over the outline of a skyscraper. "I'm amazed by this paint. I never thought it would last this long."

"Why did you make this?" I say.

_Secretly dancing  
Outside in the rain_

"It's amazing," I add, my eyes following a depiction of a sunset in orange and pink, fluffy clouds undulating in the wind. "But how did you get the idea?"

_Nothing left to fight  
No future or past  
You're going away  
I know it won't last  
I want to regret this  
I want to regret this  
I'll never forget this_

"I was upset that day. I'd been depressed for a while – living in this city wasn't what I expected. Finally Rin called me out on it. She said, 'It's just like any other damn city; if you want to feel at home here you have to make it your home' and then she showed me this view. I had supplies in my backpack left over from art class… and, well, from street art – and for one moment, I just knew what I had to do. So I did it, I started painting. And Rin joined in.

"I know some parts are sorta wonky, but I did all I could, all the details I could see. I spent a lot of nights up here."

"It shows," I say.

"Thanks."

_So many ways out  
None are mine  
Maybe we burn out  
And waste all your time  
But when it's this dark out  
I feel alive_

"So, what are the words from?"

"A song we wrote for our non-existent band." He smiles. "It's weird – at the time, I knew it wasn't perfect, the rhyming scheme's so off, but now… I'd love to be able to write like that again. Completely… meaning it, you know?"

"Yeah. I know."

"That's why I have to believe in this book project. Throw myself into it entirely. It sounds stupid, but it feels like a last chance."

For a moment, what he's said resonates with me so much that I forget to nod.

"So," he says, "are you in?"

"I'll try," I say. "I'm not much of an artist, but if I feel like I can make something one day – I'll go for it. You never know."

"I'm sure it will be amazing."

-/-/-

When we go back inside, I meet Ty. He's a tall, muscular man in his mid-twenties, with cropped light-brown hair. I speculate he's the owner of the sports magazines.

He looks exhausted. "Hey, Sarah. Jazzy. Jazzy's friend," he says, smiling.

"Ty, this is Akito," says Sarah.

Ty extends his hand. When I shake it, his grip is strong but gentle. "Nice to meet you."

"Thanks. You too," I say.

We sit down to a meal of chicken with pepper, rice and broccoli. I cautiously watch everyone around me, trying to figure out the rules on how to behave in a situation like this. It's not like I never ate dinner with my family before, but this is different. I was never close to my aunt and uncle – never let them get close, afraid they would reject me. And for as long as I can remember, Hatori has been like a brother to me, but when he took me out of the house to restaurants, that felt like an escape from my life. This _is _Jazzy's life. He, and Ty, and Sarah probably come home to this every day: kindness and conversation and warm food.

It seems so unusual to me, to see a family of people who are _nice _to each other, who greet each other when they come home, who cook for each other and eat together. Where people as different as Jazzy and Sarah and Ty all seem to accept each other, and respect each other, and genuinely _care _about each other.

It feels like such a special, personal moment. Why are they letting me into it?

Jazzy and Ty bow their heads, and I imitate them as Sarah says a prayer in a foreign language. "Amen," they all say when she finishes, and I say "amen," too, even though I say it too late and it sounds too loud without anyone else's voice to accompany it.

Jazzy, Ty and Sarah ask each other about their day, and I infer that Sarah works at a grocery story and Ty's job has something to do with the newspaper. Sometimes Sarah and Ty ask me questions about school. I try my best to be polite, but mostly end up answering in monosyllables.

People are watching, so of course I have to eat. I have to restrain myself from wolfing down everything on my plate, so I cut the chicken and broccoli into as small pieces as I can, then make myself eat them slowly. By the time everyone else has finished seconds and thirds, my plate is still half-full. I am about to clear it, then give in and finish the rest in three huge spoonfuls. _You already ruined it for the day, might as well eat as much as you want, _says a voice in the back of my mind, but I ignore it. I know from experience that, after going hungry for so long, if I ate as much as I wanted at once, it would make me sick.

I help to clear the table, then mumble something about having to go finish my homework. Everyone thanks each other and I do my best to smile before I turn away. As the door closes behind me, I exhale a breath I didn't realize I'd been holding.

I walk back to my apartment with no decorations and with nobody waiting for me. I try to feel happy for Jazzy, my friend, rather than jealous of him. But mostly, I feel blank. I've let out all the secrets I've been holding in and I know I should feel better, but I don't know what I feel. Like the things I was worried about aren't so bad, but I'm still worried, only now it's harder to pinpoint the source.

The pessimistic mantra of "no one would understand" that usually plays in my mind has been proven a lie, and now I don't know what to think. Even the hunger pangs that have become a bizarre source of comfort, something familiar, are dulled.

If I could cry, I think I would feel better. I could literally drain these feelings out of myself. But I can't.

I unlock my apartment and step inside, planning to go sleep. It's not late yet, but I feel too tired to think. Instead, I find a letter that somebody's slid under the door.

I read it twice, then again, just to make sure I haven't misunderstood. I dial Hatori's number, and even though he only takes two rings to pick up, it feels like ages. "Hello?" he says.

"I really have to talk to you. It's about my mother."


	15. XIV: Hope You Feel Bad

Thank you MissAkito for the review. I can't believe it's been so long between chapters... sorry. It's crazy to think how much happened in that time. I started and ended a relationship, graduated high school, decided where I am going for university, and registered for classes. I'm old... haha. The chapter title is a song by Excuse 17, I don't actually hope you feel bad. I hope you feel awesome, because you are reading my story and that makes you pretty damn cool.

I think I'm going back to shorter chapters because they are easier to write and read so everyone wins! Yay.

Deconstruction  
XIV: Hope You Feel Bad

_She wants to see me. _My heads feels hollow except for those words, echoing. The room is so quiet I feel as though I am underwater. The apartment seems too big, too empty. I place the phone down with a click. And the silence returns.

_The letter in That Woman's spidery calligraphy, black ink on stiff paper with _Winterson Psychiatric Hospital _typed in red in the corner._

"_Akito,_

_I am scheduled to be discharged at some point in the next few months. Although we have not been in contact for nearly two years, I feel we should meet to discuss your living arrangements and future. I realize this will change things for you, but I believe it is necessary we have this conversation. I have been given a day pass for December 27__th__, and will be at Jasmine Tea House at 1:00._

_-Your mother,_

_Ren Sohma"_

The words run in circles through my mind, too fast to hold on to long enough to make sense of. I have no idea what to feel. Happy that she's doing better? Angry at her for thinking she has the right to act like a parent after all she put me through? Nervous? Mostly I feel dizzy.

"This is a decision you've got to make for yourself, Akito," Hatori had said over the phone. "In all honesty, I do not think it would surprise Ren if you chose not to attend, and if you feel that seeing her would be too triggering, no one would hold it against you. But if you would like to reestablish a relationship with your mother, this might be a chance to do so.

"I realize it's a difficult decision, but it is yours. All I can really tell you is that if you let someone else make this choice for you, you will most likely regret it, no matter the outcome."

I wanted to tell him that he was wrong, that where That Woman was concerned I couldn't trust myself to think straight, but my throat had closed up and all I could force out was, "Okay."

My mind feels like one of those houses they show on the news when a storm has hit, where the walls have collapsed inward and everything inside is crushed. It's not the time to try to salvage anything; I briefly lie down before accepting the fact I'm not going to get my eyes to stay closed. I try to read, but my eyes jump between words too quickly to give meaning to the letters.

_Tomorrow I'll talk to someone, _I think. _Or not._

Whichever seems less crazy in the light of day.

-/-/-

In the days leading up to winter break, I am alternately pleased and ashamed that I barely think of That Woman at all. But I'm not surprised – I barely thought about her when we lived together, so why should this change now that I may or may not see her just once?

Over the years I'd fallen into the habit, or fallen back on the survival instinct, of viewing my mother as a kind of superstition. Thinking about her wouldn't do any good, because she wasn't rational. She was a ghost that drifted through the room, cooling the air, silent or making sounds I gradually learned to tune out. Just odd syllables or things I had heard thousands of times before from her (_Do your homework. Where do they go? Clean up. _Once, her eyes drifting over the living room, over me, she started and then said with mild surprise: _Oh, you're still here? _I barely ever left the house during this time period, and hadn't mentioned plans to go anywhere. Perhaps fortunately, her eyes glazed over and she wandered into another room before I could ask what she meant.).

But in my real life, or what seemed real at the time, books and schoolwork and controlling my life through what I let myself eat (Do you know what a powerful feeling that is? Being able to disappear at will, day by day, to choose whether to exist, and to what degree, to starve off your flaws? Invisible, then invincible, faceless, flawless, then gone.) she didn't seem to be something that could belong in this world. She couldn't hurt me, this shadow that drifted through the house. Even if she wanted to, I was stronger. I was real.

So, like old times, I drown myself in equations, notes, formulas, staying up late to shovel them into my head like snow, packing together thick layers of facts like an attempt to build a shelter.

Even if I don't think about her, her resurfacing has brought back old habits. Rin asks me several times why I'm so quiet, and Brit takes me aside and asks me if anything's wrong (_Just tired_, I say, and I am tired, it's true. When she's still looking at me like she expects something, I add, _stupid teachers, giving so much homework,_ and she expresses her agreement before excusing herself to go to journalism). Jazzy invites me to hang out but I lie about having to put in extra shifts at work.

Around Tohru, I do my best to be cheerful, and honestly, when I try, I can be a convincing actor. I smile and tell her I'm doing well, my voice only straining the slightest with my false enthusiasm. Nevertheless, I think she senses something is off. "Akito... did something happen?" I pretend to misunderstand, or like there is no other way to understand, and tell her how great I'm doing in my classes, I'm ahead in all the readings, my Chem teacher recommended me for an award and my English teacher is saying I should become a tutor.

Tohru smiles widely and tells me how happy she is for me. I listen closely, making mental notes: this is what enthusiasm sounds like. Study it.

My best guess as to why she seems to accept my explanation without further question is that we don't spend much time around each other during these last days. She is heavily involved with a drama production that consumes nearly all her time – and also... I avoid her. I feel like an awful person as I do it, but at the same time, I'm terrified that if she saw me like this, as I really am, she would never have anything to do with me again. And if I am going to get through this, I need to hold onto a strand of hope. I need to imagine myself figuring it out, and then things will get better, and she will be waiting for me.

We talk long enough to make plans to hang out over winter break. I really do mean them, I book the days off work.

But the concerned citizen who most affects me is the person I least expect to speak to me, much less to express concern over my well-being.

-/-/-

"Come on."

I don't realize he's talking to me until he grabs the handle of my backpack and jerks me backwards. "Let's go."

"Go where?"

"Out."

"Of the school?"

He doesn't bother replying, but his ember-coloured eyes bore into me.

"I have class," I say.

"No, you don't."

"I'm supposed to be in English!"

"Your teacher cancelled classes for the week."

"How do you know that?"

"Kagura's in your class. I know her."

I find the phrasing interesting – "_I know her,"_ not "_We're friends."_

But I don't dwell on that. I'm more concerned about my safety than Kyo's personal issues. He knows I lied to him, so why am I still standing? He definitely fits the profile of a low-bullshit-tolerance type of guy. Why hasn't he hit me?

"What do you want from me?" I say.

"Just to talk."

"So talk."

"Not here."

I sigh. "Fine."

He lets go of my backpack and begins walking towards the door. "Come on," he says, without looking back.

I follow him. I can't help it. I want to know what's going on.

Outside, we stand waiting at the intersection. I watch wisps of powdered snow tail behind passing cars, moving like something alive, or like the opposite of a flame.

My two hoodies can't stop the cold from piercing me, but I fight off shivers. Kyo is in a t-shirt. I don't want him to see my weakness.

The light changes and we walk toward an area I've never been before. "Where are we going?" I say after a block.

"Food," says Kyo.

After about twenty more minutes of walking, a tingling sensation spreads from my legs to my head, into the corners of my eyes and then over my entire field of vision. Everything darkens, like walking inside after bright sunlight, but my eyes don't adjust and begin to bring back colour. Instead, the grey fades to almost black. I feel like I am disappearing, like if I fall down it will feel so good...

I don't feel the fall, but suddenly there are arms around me, catching me.

Kyo looks at me from above, eyes narrowed. "This is why we have to talk."

I let go of him and sit down on a parking block, my head against my knees, which refuse to stop shaking. "Fine," I say. My vision is swimming so I shut my eyes, resulting in a kaleidoscope of ashen starbursts.

I'm dimly aware of the wind, and the cold of the concrete, and then after a vague interval of time Kyo taps me on the shoulder. "Here."

I raise my head and slowly open my eyes. "I didn't know what kind you liked, so I got you a few." He cradles several cans of juice and soda in his arms. I take a lemonade and mumble my probably inaudible thanks.

He adds, "And, uh, you should probably eat something, so I got bagels. You can pick between the salmon and vegetarian one, or if you don't like bagels I could get something else..."

"Salmon's good," I say. Then after a pause: "Thanks." I try to make sure he hears this time, and end up saying it louder than intended.

I try to control myself, knowing that if I eat too fast I will make myself sick. But the taste is amazing, and I imagine that with each bite I can feel my energy returning. By the time I am finished Kyo has only eaten half of his.

I must be staring at it because Kyo says, "You can have the rest of mine if you want. I'm not that hungry."

"No thanks," I say, knowing I've already eaten a ridiculous amount, even if I am still hungry. I sip my lemonade – it's too sweet, but it has calories, so maybe it will help a bit.

"You know, I had a whole speech planned out," says Kyo. "It was very intimidating. But this kind of ruins the mood, doesn't it?"

"You could still be intimidating if you wanted. I mean, you could-" He smiles and I trail off, then laugh. "Yeah, getting me lunch and making sure I'm okay does kind of lessen the effect. How much do I owe you, by the way?"

"Don't worry about it."

"This is really weird."

"Yeah, I know."

"So, um, what was your speech?"

"It was, let's see... well, for a start I was going to say that if it was up to me, I wouldn't let you within a hundred yards of Tohru. But I know it isn't up to me, and Tohru really likes you, so maybe I'm wrong and you're not the jerk you come across as."

"Same to you, I guess."

"But as you've probably noticed, Tohru is... she's just _nice._ Like actually, she's the only person I know who can be hurt like she has and still see the good side of everything. But she has been hurt. Between her family and her ex... she's gone through things you can't imagine. Her kindness isn't because she's sheltered or, or weak. It's because her spirit is incredibly strong.

"But... I can't stand to see her get hurt again, not after all she's gone through. She cares about you. The least you could do is care about yourself too. I don't know what's going on with you, but it's not just yourself you're hurting. You have people who really care about you. Don't fuck it up. And, um... that's about it."

"Good speech."

"Thanks." I glance towards him and see he's looking away, so I look away too.

"You know... you should do the same," I say.

"Huh?"

"Look after yourself. You were the one who got beat up in a parking lot. Tohru still doesn't know about that."

"This is different. If I told Tohru what was going on, it would hurt her. You're hurting her by not facing... whatever it is that's wrong with you."

I wince at those last words. Like how I used to think of That Woman. _There's something wrong with her._ I say as confidently as I can, not caring if I come off as arrogant, "Then tell me what's going on. I'm not Tohru. If it really is about her, why not tell me?"

"You know why."

"No, I don't."

"Guys don't talk about that kind of thing."

"Bullshit. I'm a guy." I only realize after I say it that it's a lie. Sort of.

"I don't hear you talking about your problems either."

"I'll face mine if you face yours. Just tell me why he was after you."

"Because I was there!" He takes a deep breath, looking embarrassed, then says more calmly, "It's just... the way it's always been. Or since junior high, I guess. This guy, Tyler... well, he's a douche. He picks fights, and I fall for it, and then I get my ass kicked." His eyes darken. "You know, it's not serious, it's all a game, right? You can't do anything but hit back, or things would get a lot worse, he'd drag in his schoolboard parents and psycho friends."

He tosses his empty soda can into the recycling bin across the lot, and it hits with a loud, metallic vibration. "You know," he says, "in all his life, I'm pretty sure only one person has ever beaten Tyler in a fight. Three guesses who."

"I have no idea."

"Yuki Aizawa."

"I thought you hated Yuki."

"I do."

"And Tyler hates you both?"

"He hates me. He respects Yuki."

"Doesn't Yuki hate him?"

"Probably."

"I don't think I can keep track of who does and doesn't hate each other."

"Yeah. I know the feeling."

"Are we... okay with each other now?"

"I think so. But if you hurt Tohru, I'll kill you."

"Same to you."

"Good."

-/-/-

That night I pencil the time for my visit with That Woman into the calendar, and call Hatori to arrange a ride into the town. Then I go to bed and have nightmares which I forget as soon as I open my eyes. But it's the first full night's sleep I've had since the arrival of the letter.


	16. XV: You Like All The Parties

**Deconstruction  
XV: You Like All The Parties**

Thank you to **Gene Sama**,** MissAkito**, and **Lileth** for your continued support of this story. And thanks especially to the wonderful **yellowis4happy**, whose feedback on what I originally posted helped me to greatly improve this chapter. Chapter title is a song by Rae Spoon.

**Tohru**

Scraps of colour radiate from where Kyo and I stretch out on the floor - wrapping foil, beads, pencil crayons, half-finished drawings. We sit in silence, except for the sandy sound of Kyo's pencil scratching on paper - sometimes a rush, the commotion of movement compressed into a still life as the pages fill with colour like empty vases in a rainstorm. Sometimes, a pause. A dam against the stream. But a trickle edges through. Scratch scratch, dot-dashed onto the portrait.

My hands move unquestioningly as they click beads onto a piece of string. The motion is more rhythm than thought, and it feels, as the rows form, interlock, and take shape, as if time slows down. Just for long enough to catch my breath.

We've all agreed that, since so many people are coming to the party and most of us don't have a lot of money, we won't spend a lot of money on gifts. But it matters to me to give my friends something they will like - last week, I went around making a list of everybody's favourite colours.

I mentioned to Kyo that I was impressed by how much time he put into the portraits he is giving. He told me he needed the practice for art school; I wasn't sure that was the whole story, but I smiled and some of my anxiety ebbed away. It only occurred to me after I invited Akito's friends that Kyo doesn't like some of them. But he is kind. Even someone he doesn't get along with, he respects their happiness.

Kyo takes a long time to get to know. I am always surprised by him, and I know him better than most because ever since I met him, he has been there for me. When S disappeared, he was the one who held me when I cried. He was the one who went for walks with me when I was too worried and angry and sad and confused to go to class, and who let me talk about my worries and anger and sadness and confusion without judging.

(When S disappeared, it was one of the few times I can remember when I was angry. It was partially at her, for doing something where she could get hurt, and sometimes it was directed at some faceless stranger who had taken her away - though I could feel the holes in that story, a fabrication woven from facts that didn't fit together, strings too long or too short or just not there. But mostly I was angry at myself. For not seeing it coming, for not knowing how unhappy she was. For being a bad girlfriend. For not being enough of a reason for her to stay.)

Kyo distracted me with comics he drew, and stayed up with me on the phone during the nights my thoughts got too painful when I was alone. He watched movies with me and made silly jokes and then, suddenly serious, would tell me how strong I was, until finally I could believe him, even for just a few seconds at a time.

"This look right?" asks Kyo, passing his art book to me. "The eyes, I mean."

I bring the paper close to my face, catching the vanilla-like scent of the ink he used, as well as spicy traces of graphite. It's a portrait of Akito. Her mouth is tilted slightly upwards at the sides - she rarely lets emotions show in her face, even happiness - and her dark eyes seem to hold a far-back light, like when you are deep underwater, and flecks of sun filter down from the surface.

"They're perfect," I say, handing the book back. "It's so beautiful, the way you have of mixing light and shadows."

"Chiaroscuro," he says. "At least, I think that's the word. I'm not that good yet, but thanks." He always deflects when someone compliments his work, but I hear a note of satisfaction in his voice. "How is he doing, anyway? Akito, I mean."

I'm caught off-guard by the word "he", though I've heard it before in relation to Akito. I try to answer quickly, so as not to give my - surprise? confusion? (that's not exactly it, a sensation like being thrown off-balance) - away. "I'm not sure… We haven't seen each other very much lately."

"Oh. That sucks."

"I thought you didn't like Akito very much."

"I don't have to like someone to care about them." He turns the book of artwork sideways in his hands and makes several marks before righting in. "And besides, I like when you're happy. He does make you happy, right?"

"I… yes. Very much so."

"Why did you hesitate?"

I try to pin down what exactly the feeling is that's fluttering inside me, but the words that come to mind can't quite catch it. I take too long to answer.

"I'm sorry," Kyo says. "Forget I said that. I don't have much right to talk about relationship stuff anyway."

"No, it's fine. But… I don't know a lot about relationships either. Akito is the first person since…"

"I know." The tip of Kyo's pencil breaks as he presses it hard against the paper. "I'm never going to forgive her for what she did to you."

"It was years ago."

"That doesn't mean she didn't do it."

"I know… but I'd rather not talk about S right now."

"I'm sorry."

"It's okay. But yes, Akito makes me happy. And I hope I…" I go quiet.

"Hey," says Kyo softly. He opens his arms and I hug him. "I'm sure you make him happy too."

-/-/-

The electric _bong _of the doorbell reverberates through the walls.

"Tohru! Door!" yells Taro, but I am already running down the stairs, footsteps echoing through the house.

"Hey," says Akito as I fling the door open.

I hug her and she initially pulls back in surprise, but then puts her arms around me. I say, "I missed you."

"Yeah. You too," she says softly. She runs her fingers down through my hair, then freezes.

"And who is this?" Taro's voice is loud, fake-casual from up the stairs.

"Akito, this is my cousin Taro. Taro, you remember me telling you about Akito?"

Taro strides towards us. "Ah, so this is your friend." He claps Akito on the shoulder, then shakes her hand. There is a strange intensity about him, coming off in waves. "Well, I'll let you two be. Oh, and Tohru?"

"Yes?"

"I hear your old friend, _S_ I think she calls herself, is in town. You may want to keep in mind what you learned from that experience."

"Taro… please go." My voice is cold, and sounds wrong coming from me. But I can't let myself shatter. Not now. Not in front of him. I turn back to Akito. "Would you like to watch that movie I told you about?"

"Sure." I haven't told her about any specific movie lately, but I take her hand and we walk up to my room, away from Taro. I shut the door and sit down on my bed, making a small noise of exhaustion. Akito sits down beside me and puts an arm around me, and I lean into her.

"I'm so sorry you had to be there for that," I say.

"It wasn't your fault. Are you… okay?"

"Kind of shaken. But happy to see you again."

"You too." Akito leans in, hesitates, then quickly kisses me. I feel myself smile. I move my hand up the back of her neck, feeling the bumps of vertebrae, then into her smooth hair, and I gently pull her towards me and return the kiss. I feel the warmth of her skin, and her scent, like leaves and honey and something else, something uniquely her, envelops me.

As we break apart, I watch her dark eyes open. Like Kyo drew them, they are the type of dark eyes with a lot of light in them, if you look from the right direction. Like small fires burning behind layers of stained glass.

"Tohru…" she says, after a moment of silence. "Who is S?"

My body tightens, like a spring drawing back. Akito pulls away, then changes her mind, then changes it again. The mattress creaks softly with the weight of her indecision.

I take a deep breathe. "S was someone I knew… We went to school together. And then for a short time we dated. When I was in grade 10. Then she ran away."

"Ran away? Like, in the literal sense?"

I nod.

"That's… _Why_?"

"I guess there just wasn't enough to keep her here."

"But what about… the people she cared about?"

"She cut off all contact."

"That's stupid." She fidgets with the camera in her hands, twisting the lens cap back and forth. "I'm sorry, but that's incredibly stupid of her. You can't just remove people from your life, not after you let them into it. One big action doesn't change anything that matters. Not for the better."

"You're probably right," I say. The way Akito spoke, I feel the pain in her voice, an undercurrent tearing up the usual low measuredness of it. It makes me want to hold her close and keep her from ever being hurt again, and it reminds me how little I know about her. I wonder who tried to remove her, or who she tried to remove.

"I can't believe your cousin brought that up," she says quietly, angrily.

"He worries a lot. In his own way, I think he wants what's best for our family." I pause. "I can take it. I'm stronger than I seem."

"No one should have to be that strong."

I lie down on my back and look at the ceiling. It's blue with white splotches of cloud painted on. At this distance, they are as misty as real clouds and it looks just like the sky.

"I'd never do that to you," she says.

"I wouldn't to you, either."

"I know." She lies down beside me. "Do you think there are really some people, who can just go? Who can leave a place and not feel everyone they used to know tugging at them to come back?"

"I don't know. S came back a month after she left. But then she went away again." I wonder if I will ever stop feeling it. This tug of the people who leave, like we're tied together by string. But I feel too small and light, and rather than an anchor bringing them back, I am buoy being pulled in all directions.

"Did you love her?" Akito asks suddenly. The words sound almost involuntary, forced out of her like a cough.

"No," I say. I think of love as being big and bright and clear as the sun, and what we had was clouded. Obscured by doubt and fear and confusion, that took the form of arguments and silences, until the promise of warmth was covered up by condensation and pollution and mile after mile of water.

It still matters, what we had. Whole ecosystems can bloom in the harshest of climates, springing from deep sea vents, strange fish with no names living their whole lives unknowing of and unknown to the surface. Just a tiny scrap of sunlight filtered down and changed by plants and animals and bacteria until it is no longer recognizable, carries with it the energy to create something intricate and scary and beautiful.

"I don't think you can love someone if you never really know them," I say.


	17. XVI: First Day of my Life

**Deconstruction  
XVI: First Day Of My Life**

Thank you so must to **yellowis4happy** and **Esther-chan** for the reviews! This is one of those chapters that turned out nothing like I planned, but I'm surprisingly happy with the results. Please let me know what you think! The title is from a song by Bright Eyes.

_"He wrote, I do not know how to live._  
_I do not know either but I am trying."_  
(-Jonathan Safran Foer, Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close)

**Akito**

I don't know what I expected. I mean, she's seventeen – did I seriously think I was going to be her first relationship? But the way she looked when she talked about S, I saw something I hadn't seen before. This... fragility. Her posture changed, like she became smaller, and she started to shake. Just barely, but enough that you could see it in her eyelashes and hands.

You don't look that way when you talk about someone unless they meant something to you. And if someone mattered that much, I don't think they ever stop meaning something.

Seeing her like that, like a leaf rattlingin the wind but refusing to be torn from the tree, or a piece of glass with a crack in it that could break if you touch it from one wrong angle, but otherwise holds strong, makes me feel so much; it's like I'll overflow, without even knowing what it is I'm feeling. There's that sensation, the one I'm used to, like I'm too big and clumsy and awkward and if I try to help I'll make everything worse. And also a feeling of insignificance – she's strong, stronger than I could have imagined, keeping all that inside her and not letting it show until now, feeling so much and not letting it stop her. I finally see what Kyo meant about her kindness being strength, really see it. And I know I'm not half that strong.

It surprises me to realize I'm not jealous, not angry because S dated Tohru. I'm upset because Tohru got hurt. Because that shouldn't have happened, not to her.

Being around Tohru, caring about her rather than just thinking of myself, I know I become a better person than I thought I was.

Of course, not better enough to understand what she sees in me.

But my arms ache to hold onto her, and I let them, let myself fold around her like origami, and for a moment I feel... right. She leans against me and breathes and I feel safe from the things around and inside me. The rushing mess of thoughts and the winter cold beneath my skin abate, and I'm left calm listening to the tides of her breathing, for once not feeling useless or out of place.

It's a feeling like, _yeah, maybe I could live in this world. Right now. Not after I lose a bit more weight and become older and smarter and start taking up less space, not after I delete my awkward features and reinvent myself as someone who makes more sense, but now. Maybe I can live. Because if someone like Tohru cares about me, maybe there's something in me that deserves to be alive._

-/-/-

**Tohru**

Akito is quiet, and this can mean a lot of things. I know she's thinking, and I want to know what she thinks about. In the little I've learned of relationships, I think they're like oceans. I think when you meet someone, you see the waves, the fractured pigments of the sunset, the limitless stars of late night. You feel the wind and the moonlight and the salt air and it's all such a rush, but there's no context, just one beautiful moment suspended in time and place.

But you have to get close to them, beneath the surface, past your expectations, let yourself be enveloped in waves of thought and meaning and not go too fast, or you'll freeze, or the undertow will force you away. You've got to feel the current with each motion, learn the rocks and sand and life all around you, and you start to understand. You maybe won't reach the deepest center of who they are, but you become aware of it, start to sense its nature and how it pulls at everything around you.

I don't know if that makes it easier or harder to forgive someone, when you know them that well. It makes it harder to forgive yourself. And it makes it impossible to forget them.

_No,_ I tell myself. _I'm not going to think of S anymore. Not now._

"Do you want to watch a movie?" I ask.

-/-/-

**Akito**

On the laptop in front of us, a movie plays about a girl who moves from town to town, staying in different hotels, trying on different odd jobs and looks and personas. The movie isn't really about her. You never find out which parts of what she says are real, as she tells various stories to everyone she meets about where she came from and who she is. She makes friends along the way, neighbors fall in love with her, but then one morning they wake up and she's not there anymore.

And they have to go on with their lives. It's more about that – about them talking to their families and lovers, trying to fix things up, though we don't even know what went wrong before the girl showed up.

And then the movie ends. The boy who ran away from home is back standing outside a bus with a suitcase, and we don't know where he's going. The man who yelled at his girlfriend for mentioning something, someone, from before the film started, is holding a telephone, and we don't know who he's calling. The neighbor who was always friendly to the girl, but quiet, who kissed her but then ran away, stands on a bridge. She throws her cell phone over, then her hat, her scarf, shoes. You think she is going to jump. She looks over with an intense, unreadable expression. But then she smiles, and the screen fades into white.

I listen to the song playing during the credits, still a bit stunned. "What did I just watch?"

Tohru turns in my arms to look at me. "Did you like it?" she says.

"I think I... yeah. The cinematography was amazing, and the acting was... real. But what did it _mean?_"

"I think it's supposed to mean different things to everyone who watches it."

"But I didn't _get _it, why does the girl never tell us who she really is?"

"Maybe she doesn't know."

"And the ending, we could interpret what everyone's doing differently. We don't know if they're any better off than they started."

"Yeah... I guess not. But we know they're trying."

"And they weren't trying before?"

"But now they're trying again. I think that's important, is what the movie's saying."

My eyes wander over Tohru's room – the shelf overflowing with the binders of screenplays, the glow-in-the-dark plastic stars on the blue walls, a poster of a rainbow and a framed photograph of a couple in their mid-twenties.

The man is tall with the same deep brown eyes as Tohru. One of his arms is around a woman with bleached red hair and a giant smile, and his other arm cradles a bundle of cloth. I look closer and see a small head with wide eyes and fuzzy brown hair looking out from the bundle.

Tohru and her parents.

"She must have been so sad," I say, the thoughts slipping out as words.

"Who?" says Tohru.

"The girl in the movie. I mean, I know it was supposed to be liberating, her being free like that, never having to stay in one place or be responsible to anyone. But sometimes she just seemed so sad. How could she live without anyone?"

"Maybe she didn't do it on purpose. Maybe she was scared."

"Of what?"

"Other people. Herself."

"Oh." I say. "Yeah... yeah, that makes sense." I look down at the floor. "You know... what we were talking about before, about people who can cut themselves off from others, how I said I wasn't one of them – that's how I know. Because I tried." She's quiet, so I continue, "My mom kicked me out of the house because I'm... well, because I'm like me. And then a bit later she, um, she tried to kill herself." My voice gets smaller with each word. Shit. Why am I telling her this?

Tohru doesn't say anything, but her arms gently tighten around me and I hold onto them like lifelines. My face is warm and my eyes wet and blurry, and I want to take it back, but it's too late to stop. "The doctors said that if I'd found her any later, she might not have been... well, she's not really _okay_, I guess. But she's still, well, here, at least. That was a couple years ago. She's in a psychiatric hospital now. They said she's doing better, they're letting her have day passes... and – and she asked me to come visit her in a few days. I think I'm going to. Do..." I make myself look up, at Tohru, her eyes sad and attentive behind her white-framed glasses, "do you think that's a bad idea?"

She thinks for a long time. "I'm not sure."

I nod.

"I think... I think it's something where, if you want to do it, you have to."

"Okay."

"But Akito... please, promise me you'll be careful? You know you deserve to be happy too, right?"

"I know," I lie. And then I start to think that maybe it's not a lie, and I have to look away so she doesn't see I'm crying. "I like your photo," I say. "The one of your family."

Her face is pressed to my cheek and I feel her smile. "I like it too," she says, One of her hands smooths my hair and the other draws circles on my back, and I feel myself relax a bit. I want to make the same movements, but I can't even keep my hands steady while I hold onto her.

It's been a long time since I let myself collapse like this. I don't think anyone's seen me this way since Hatori, back when I was a kid. Once in the city near my old town, they knocked down a building from inside, with explosives, and all at once it fell in on itself. We watched it on tv with no sound, saw the building stand strong and then suddenly dissolve into clouds of dust and piles of broken structure. It made you think about how old and empty the building was, how even though it looked fine, it put up no resistance at the chance to fold into sheets of broken glass and wood.

I feel like that building now.

My tears are running down my face, splattering Tohru's shirt. _I'm sorry, _I want to say. _I'm so sorry. This isn't me. I'm not usually like this._

But I'm not sure what I'm normally like. Without my control systems, without the pangs in my stomach and coldness in my bones to numb and distract me, I don't know what I'd feel, how I'd think. How I'd act if I wasn't afraid. Afraid of everything in this damn world. Afraid of myself.

But I'm not afraid of her. I'm safe here, and that's something I haven't felt in a long, long time. Something I've badly missed.

So instead I hold onto her, and I say, fighting to overcome the shakiness in my voice, "Could you tell me about them? About your parents?"

And she lifts a hand to my face, brushed the tears away and says, "Of course."


	18. XVII: This Is Everything

**Deconstruction  
XVII: This Is Everything**

Chapter title is a song by Tegan and Sara. Feedback is highly appreciated! I wrote this chapter in two days and worked really hard to get it done before I go out of town for a week. Hope everyone is having a good summer!

_"We all spend so much time not saying what we want, because we know we can't have it. And because it sounds ungracious, or ungrateful, or disloyal, or childish, or banal. Or because we're so desperate to pretend that things are OK, really, that confessing to ourselves they're not looks like a bad move. Go on, say what you want. ... Whatever it is, say it to yourself. The truth will set you free. Either that or it'll get you a punch in the nose. Surviving in whatever life you're living means lying, and lying corrodes the soul, so take a break from the lies for just one minute."  
(_— Nick Hornby_, A Long Way Down)_

**-/-/-**

"Kyoko and Katsuya Honda," Tohru begins. She points to the bundle in Katsuya's arms. "And that's me."

"They look really happy."

"They were." She almost touches the glass. Her finger hovers millimeters above the glass, traces her mom's outline, then her dad's. "My father was a teacher. He passed away when I was three, but Mom talked about him every day. I know he was amazing. He meant so much to her. He saved her life."

"What happened?"

"He was on a university exchange program to teach English in Japan, and she was one of his students. It was a class set up for high school students who'd gotten in trouble with the law, so they would have somewhere to go during the day and could get an education. My mom used to be involved with a gang, and she'd been trying to leave for a while. Eventually she just started avoiding the places she'd know they'd be.

"She couldn't go home often, because she didn't get along with her parents, and she couldn't go downtown because she'd been seen. So she started going to the beach every day, in the early morning and after school until the sun set. When I was in junior high, she made paintings sometimes, and they were usually of that sea. She went there and to class. She liked the school. It kept her away from the gang and her family, and my father was kind to her. I don't think she was unhappy during this time. I know she must have been scared, but she never complained about it. Eventually, the gang found out where my mom had been going, and a block away from school, they cornered her in an alley.

"They wanted her to come back to them. The fights had been getting worse and worse, and she was fast and strong and they wanted her on their side. She had been one of the highest status members, and had been in it for over five years. But a few months earlier, a girl from her gang had been put in the hospital. Everyone else wanted revenge, but she knew that if the fights went on, people were going to start dying.

"They threatened her, and when that didn't work, they threw things and pushed her. They hit her, but she refused to hit back, and that just made them angrier. They shoved her to the ground and she saw their shoes all around her, jabbing at her sides, everything blurry and chaotic. She thought she was going to die.

"And then she heard a voice. She closed her eyes and the ground sank away, and when she woke up, she was lying on a park bench. He was sitting on the ground beside her, and when her eyelids flickered open, she saw his whole face relax. He smiled in relief and she found herself smiling back.

"He told her how he'd heard the sounds of the fight and came to see what was going on, how the girls had scattered when he'd threatened to call the police. He walked her home that day, and every day after that.

"On the last day of class, he saw that she was quieter than usual, and kept looking out the window. He'd never seen her unhappy before, but this day he knew something was wrong. She walked out in the middle of class, and he knew she wasn't coming back.

"So he left too. He called in a substitute teacher, saying it was an urgent matter, and he ran to the beach. He found her sitting on a high rock beside some wildflowers, dangling her legs over the edge and looking out at the endless waves.

"'How did you know I was here?' she asked tonelessly.

"'You mentioned this place to me,' he said.

"'You're a good listener.'

"'You're worth listening to.' At this she smiled, one of those broken-glass smiles that can fracture in an instant.

"'This is where I come to think when I can't think. When my head gets too full of noise, I throw it all into the ocean.' She picked up a rock and flung it far out overhead. The sea swallowed it in a burst of white. 'I don't understand you,' she said after a pause.

"'I want to understand you,' he said.

"'Does that make a difference?'

"'No. Yes. I don't know. But I want it to. I want to live in a world where that kind of thing matters.'

"'I want to, as well. To live in that kind of world. And to understand you. And I'd... yeah, I'd like for you to understand me." She blushed suddenly, hating the unfamiliar sensation, and turned away to poke at the thorns of the wildflowers. "I'd settle even for being able to understand myself.'

"'You'll figure it out. You're young.'

"'And you're old.'

"'Hey, I'm only three years older than you!'

"'Yeah, but have you figured it out?'

"'I don't know.'

"'Then you haven't.'

"'But I know that I don't know. Maybe that's what I had to figure out.'

"'You're weird.'

"'I guess.'

"'But maybe right.'

"'Thanks. So what do you come here to think about when you can't think?'

"'Places. People. Today it was about you, actually.' She searched for something in his face to make her stop, but didn't find it. 'You know, you're the first person I've met who hasn't wanted something from me. Not someone to fight for you, or to get good grades and carry on the family honour, or to stay away from you, or to make you look good. And I don't get that. I don't get why you're wasting your time with me.'

"'I don't think any time with you is wasted.'

"'But what do you _want?'_

"'Do I have to want something?'

"'Yeah. Everyone wants something.'

"'What do you want?'

"'You go first.'

"'I want you to be okay – no. That's not it. Not just okay. You're so damn amazing. I want you to know that. And I want you to be safe, and... I want you to be happy.' She had to look away again. She focused on his shoes, his black work shoes now scuffed by the sand. 'What do you want?'

"'To not lose you,' she said.

"'You don't have to worry about that.'

"She laughed bitterly. 'Sure. You're magically not going back to America now?'

"'I told you, I'm from Canada. And I don't have to go alone.'

"'You mean... wait, what?'

"'Well, your grades are good – you're one of the best students in the class. And there are scholarships for students in your situation. Have you thought of going to school overseas?'

"She stared at the ocean. She spent most of her time thinking of overseas, but as a kind of fantasy land, not an actual possibility. This felt too easy, now that it was being offered up to her, a new life. And the easiness made it harder, like she couldn't let herself believe in it because it would inevitably be yanked out from under her, like a chair someone had moved in a cruel joke.

"'You realize this is crazy, right?' she said.

"'People do it all the time.'

"'I'm not the type of person who does things people do all the time.'

"'I noticed. It's one of the things I like about you. How many other people can say they've been here, on this ledge, looking at this view? And how many people can say that the middle of a gang fight was the first time they... Nevermind.'

"'First time what?'

"'That they looked at someone and thought, "_Wow. She is the most amazing person."_'"

"'Yeah. Rea-lly amazing, getting the crap kicked out of me. Classy as hell.'

"'Not that. The way you didn't fight back. The reason you did it. You're ten times braver than me.'

"'You're the one who saved me.'

"'Please. If the situation had been reversed, I know you would have kicked their asses.'

"'Yeah, that's true.' She laughed. 'Your scholarly Canadian self isn't really gang-savvy, are you? I probably would have had to break my vow of nonviolence and step in. For humanitarian reasons.'

"'You're too kind.' But he laughed too. "

"He was leaning back on his hands on the sand, looking up at the pale purple clouds above them. That was what she liked about this place, the vastness above and below. Being just a dot in it, like a bird flying so high it fades into nothing, or like a pebble in a mosaic. Part of something, but unseen. She reached back to touch his hand, hesitated, and tried to brush off the contact as an accident as she leaned back herself. But he moved his hand back towards her, and soon their fingers were interlaced.

"They watched the sun sink behind the waves, tendrils of coloured light reaching towards them. They felt the evening air against their skin, smelled the ocean night smells as stars began to poke through the black above them. They leaned against each other, feeling body heat and heartbeats and safe. My mom wasn't unhappy very often, but it had also been a long time since she'd been happy. She felt strange at that time, and her mind kept flitting back to that, trying to place the feeling. As she lay back, moving her fingers through the sand, listening to Katsuya breathing, she realized what it was and gave a small jolt. Katsuya felt it and ran a hand through her hair, down her neck, over her cheek, to calm her. His touch felt like the first drink of water to a person wandering in a desert.

"She was happy.

"'If I come to Canada with you...'

"'Yeah?'

"What will happen?'

"'I don't know.'

"'That's it? No promises?'

"'What happens next is up to you.'

"'How about...' She stood up, flung another rock into the sea, and cheered at how far it went. 'How about we try your idea. A place where understanding each other matters. How about we make a place like that, and we live there?'

"'I like that idea.'

"'Me too.' She kissed him, the sound of waves whispering all around them, and they walked down the jagged rocks, hand in hand, to buy plane tickets."

"And then... that was it? They came here? It all worked out?"

"Well, it's never that simple. But whatever happened next, it seemed to work."

"You're a good storyteller," I say.

Tohru smiles. "It's all the screenplay practice. I'm constantly retelling stories in my head. I can monologue on a whim, if the time seems right."

"It was. Right, I mean. It was a great story." I lean in and kiss her, and she kisses me back, and when we break apart we sit for a moment, just smiling at each other. I feel like my heart will burst, but in a good way. I don't think I've ever spent so long just sitting and talking with someone, or had someone be so... open, with me. The world she talked about, where people can understand each other. In that moment, I really believe it can exist.

"I have an idea," I say. "But you have to promise to keep it a secret."

"What's your idea?"

"Well, Jazzy and Yuki and couple other friends from school, we have this project. And if you're willing to write something for it, I think it would help us out a lot..."


	19. XVIII: Landlocked Blues

**Deconstruction**  
**XVIII: Landlocked Blues**  
**Part One**

Hello, and thank you for reading my story. I have the next half of this chapter written, and will hopefully post it soon. I feel the next half is more of a return to my usual style. However, I would also really like to get some feedback on this story, because I have heard absolutely nothing about the last few chapters. I do not want to sound selfish, but I need to know whether people are reading this. I will update when I get 58 reviews.

So please, tell what you like, and/or what I could improve on. It would mean a lot to me, and I will listen. Thank you. The chapter title is a song by Bright Eyes.

Kyo

The day of Tohru's party, Brit and I sit on the train, looking out the window and pretending things aren't weird.

"Lots of people are going to be there," she says.

"Yeah," I say. Telephone poles and highways fly by.

"Should be interesting."

"Yeah." I'm not trying to be unconversational, it's just I can't think of stuff to say. It's like ever since Darren's party, my and Brit's roles have flipped and now she's the (relatively) outgoing one and I'm the nice-but-awkward guy. Minus the nice.

I've been mentally slapping myself for not noticing it earlier. The way she smiles and waves at me every time we see each other, even though she's not generally that cheerful. How she texts me about my day. That the awkwardness she shows when we hang out isn't there when she's talking to other people.

It's Kagura all over again. Well, minus the stalking. So not really the same at all.

Except that I'm going to end up hurting her. Because I'm still the same.

The problem here is that Brit is a Very Nice Person, and I am... not. I have anger issues. I do stupid things and afterwards have no idea why I did them. And as Akito pointed out, I'm not exactly proactive at dealing with problems in my life. It's confusing enough when people like me platonically, and the idea of any other type of like, when applied to me, kind of makes my brain spasm.

I like Brit. As in, I care about her. Which is exactly why I can't let this go anywhere. Which is why I am currently sitting across from her on raggedy-ass trains seats, making a fool of myself.

"So," she says. "Yuki, Jazzy, Rin... Momiji couldn't make it... and then there's Akito. And Tohru, of course. And her older friends. That's everyone, right?"

"I think so," I say.

"Maybe interesting's the wrong word. Maybe chaotic is better."

"Chaos can be interesting."

"I guess. From a distance. When you're stuck inside it, it's not so great."

"Tell me about it," I say. Brit is one of the few – actually, the only one – who know about my home life. Tohru knows a bit, but I tend not to mention it around her - she's got enough to deal with without me dumping more on her. She knows my mom committed suicide, and that I don't like my dad and I stay out of the house as often as possible. Brit knows more.

The thing about "How are you?" texts is, if someone sends them everyday, eventually they're going to catch you in one of those moods where you get sick of saying "Fine" and want to spill out the whole story because it feels like if you keep quiet anymore your head will blow up. So... I told her. How my dad and I go weeks at a time without speaking. How when we do speak, it's always arguments. How when we argue, he always brings my mom up. Because that's the only way he can hurt me anymore.

"Things are better at my house now," I say. "We're back to not talking."

"That's good," she says. "Or... better, at least. Do you think you'll move out?"

"If I get that art scholarship," I say.

"You will."

I smile. "Thanks."

We talk about school a bit more as we walk from the train station. Brit says she wants to take a year off to work next year, before going to hairdressing school. I just want to draw and find a new place to live, so art college and living in residence is the only thing that really makes sense.

"You know," she says out of nowhere. "It's too bad Kureno can't make it."

"Why can't he?"

"After what happened with Akito, he's been avoiding everyone."

I nod, feeling stupid for not knowing what she's talking about. Thankfully I don't have to fake it much longer, because we arrive at Tohru's house.

Her grandpa greets us at the door with a wide smile. "_Good afternoon, Sohma-kun,"_ he says in Japanese. Then in English, to Brit, "And welcome. I don't think we've met."

"I'm Brittany. It's nice to meet you."

"And you. Please come in. Some of the other guests arrived a bit before you, and are in the living room with Tohru and Brody."

Damn, her cousins are here again? I head up the stairs, expecting to find Brody starting shit. Instead, I hear laughter. Tohru, Yuki, Jazzy, Brody, Rin, and a girl I don't know sit on and around a sofa. Candy-bright cords of a video game lay spread out around them, hooked into the tv and the controllers held by Brody, Yuki and Rin, while Jazzy talks animatedly to Tohru and the new girl.

"Hey." He grins when he sees Brit and I. "How's it going?"

Tohru runs up to hug Brit and I, and after all the hellos and embracing, I look back to Jazzy.

"Good," I say, surprised. I've always got the feeling Jazzy didn't like me. Nevermind that, a cousin of Tohru's acting like a human being has to be a sign of the apocalypse. I remember Tohru telling me that Taro, who's a couple years older than us, is the worst of the siblings. Maybe Brody's alright. "You?"

"Fantastic," says Jazzy. He turns to the Aboriginal girl with Skrillex hair. "Melissa, that's Kyo."

"Cool." She stands up and shakes my hand. She's tall, with bright eyes and a quick smile. "So you're the art guy?"

Jazzy interjects, "I told her about that time in grade 10 you spray-painted Spiderman on the gym ceiling."

"You still remember that?" I say.

The gym at our school has this big tarp curtain that descends from the roof when they need to divide the room. It's not hard to climb if you figure out how to grip it – and of course, I did.

After class one day, I hung around until everyone had left. The silent school was surreal, like being inside a dream, as I clambered up the curtain with a backpack clattering with paint, then sat in the rafters and set to work. I don't know how long I was up there, but it was dark when I left. I felt so incredibly _good _as I walked out into the empty street. The night air tasted sweet and wild. Maybe I was just high off paint fumes, but everything felt saturated with possibility. I feel like that, after making art. Like everything I see is paint, or canvas, or inspiration, as much mine as anyone else's.

Of course, reality always strikes eventually. For example, the next morning, when I learned the school had security cameras. Mr. Olson called me out of chem class and I sat at the principal's office for the millionth time that year. I was at the point where I knew all the secretaries and could ask about their kids/spouses/cats by name.

The gym teacher wanted me to repaint the ceiling, but the principal said that was too dangerous, so I got off with a month of garbage-cleaning duty and Spidey stayed up until the end of the semester, when they hired professionals to re-boring the decor.

"I'd almost forgotten," I say.

"Dude," says Jazzy, "I'd never forget that. If I were you, I'd put it on my friggin' resume."

"It _would_ get more interesting jobs than my shelf-stocking career," I say.

"Safeway?"

"Unfortunately. The owner of a record store said he'd hire me, but it went out of business."

Yuki wheels around. "Which record store?"

"A place called Flamingo's." What's his problem? He's looking at me like I just told him his hair's on fire. "You know it?"

"In a manner of speaking," he replies. He turns back to his video game. Mario dies about 15 times in the next next minute, so either he's still freaked or he sucks at video games.

Whatever.

The doorbell goes off, and Tohru runs to answer it. Akito's voice and Tohru's happiness at seeing him echo up the stairs. The two come back holding hands and sit down beside Brit and I. I roll my eyes. Akito and I manage "Hey"s at each other, which I think is a pretty substantial accomplishment.

The party continues to go so well it weirds me out a bit. I keep expecting something to explode – if not a fight then a freak accident, like, I don't know, a radioactive turkey or something. But we take turn at the video game, and Jazzy and Melissa and I talk about comics, and Brody continues to improve on his personal-record-breaking-time of not acting like an ass.

I've almost started to relax by the time it does happen. We've finished gaming and are watching Little Miss Sunshine when the doorbell rings. Taro and Brody's mom strides up the stairs, her eldest son following her like a dog that's been yelled at but is still desperate to please. Her eyes rake over the scene. They take in Jazzy's blue hair, Rin and Yuki's black clothes, my baggy metal band t-shirt and Melissa's partially-shaved head, before they finally settle on Tohru and Akito, leaning on each other on the corner of the sofa.

"Come, Brody. We're going home."

"But we just got here!" he protests.

"Go to the car. I've got to have a talk with your grandfather."

Brody's face falls, but he starts packing up the gamecube controllers. I help him. I never would have thought I'd feel sorry for Brody. Taro and his mom go into the kitchen and close the door. The sound of their voices is too muffled to make out, but she's clearly pissed.

"I... I need to go check on the cake in the oven," says Tohru quietly. She actually does, this isn't a transparent excuse to go talk to her aunt. You do _not _want that woman to catch you alone.

"I'll do it, if you want," I say.

"Are you sure?"

"Yeah, no problem."

So I walk out of the room, trying to look a lot more confident than I feel. Yeah, I know she's a middle-aged housewife. But picture the most terrifying teacher you ever had. You know, the one who complained about your disrespectful generation and screamed her face purple if you used blue ink instead of black. Tohru's aunt is that teacher times ten, compressed into five-foot-one of pure fascism.

So anyway. I am checking on the cake. Yep. It is a cake. I poke it with a fork. It squishes cakeily. All good.

Tohru's aunt snaps her head towards me as I enter the room, then goes back to complaining at Tohru's grandfather.

"It's just not appropriate," she's saying. "I know she didn't have a good upbringing, but that's not my fault, and my son shouldn't have to be... _exposed _to that kind of thing."

"I don't understand what you are referring to. Tohru is an excellent student; she helps out around the house and has never gotten into any sort of trouble."

"Grandfather," says Taro, "I know Tohru has many good qualities" (it looks like it physically pains him to say this) "but her choice of acquaintances is not particularly discerning. Surely you remember what happened two years ago?"

"Yes, that runaway," his mom butts in. "These people are not adjusted properly. Heaven knows Tohru's... _lifestyle choices,_ are her own business, but I can't allow her to _flaunt _her teenaged rebellion in front of Brody –"

"Hey Taro," I say. Everyone turns to me, startled – it's obvious they'd forgotten I was there. "You still with that girl?"

"Who-" he and his mom say in unison.

"You know, that one you were making out with on the couch last week. I think she was an art student. Or a musician or something."

I walk from the room, Taro sputtering behind me. Even with the door closed, everyone hears the shriek erupt behind me.

"AN ART STUDENT?"

Everyone looks at me questioningly. "Oven's fine," I say.


	20. XVIII: Landlocked Blues part two

**Deconstruction**  
**Landlocked Blues**  
**Part Two**

Thank you so much to the wonderful **yellowis4happ**y for the reviews! They were very informative and encouraging, as always, and it means so much to me that you support this story. As promised, here is part two!

**Kyo**

Akito is oddly quiet for the rest of the party. Anyone Tohru's aunt hates, I kind of have to sympathize with, so I'm paying closer attention to him than usual. I know I might not come across as the smartest guy in the world, but I am observant, when it matters to me.

In other words, when Tohru's concerned.

Akito's not exactly the oversharing type, but something's definitely off today. And Tohru knows it. The way she's looking at him (her? Whatever)... she definitely knows what's going on. Her constant glances towards Akito, and the way she's always touching his arm, as though making sure he's still there – and the way he (Akito said she was a guy, didn't she – he? And he's probably the expert on the matter. Tohru's aunt doesn't seem to agree, but what does she know?) traces his hand across hers, reassuring her that he is.

Body language. _Are you here? I'm here. Are you here? I'm here? _

For a moment there's this lonely feeling inside me, like a black hole about to collapse me from the inside. I get like this sometimes, my thoughts moving in tighter and tighter circles like water going down a drain. Everything kind of connects in ways that don't make sense when I think about it after – like, I am alone because I mess things up and hurt people. That is why I feel like shit. My mom felt like shit all the time. That's why she jumped off a roof. If I knew how to not mess things up or hurt people, maybe she wouldn't have felt like shit –

No. No no no no. Stop fucking _thinking, _Kyo.

I think that's why, sometimes, I don't come across as that smart. It's because naturally, I'm actually the type of guy who lives very much in his head. And that's not always a very safe place to be. So I try to live in my body, in my eyes and hands and legs, and make lists of what I see and touch and where I go, and I call that my life. I try to make it matter.

Sometimes I wonder if we all live in different worlds, in our heads, and the physical world is a broken bridge between them. We can call to each other from across the water, and describe what's on the other side, and sometimes even get close enough to touch each other. But at the end of the day, we can't cross over. We're stuck with ourselves.

Akito and Tohru, constantly touching, reaching across the bridge.

After my mom died, the teachers would just nod it I told them I hadn't felt like doing the homework, and if I said I was leaving early, they wouldn't ask for an explanation. They'd praise me especially if I did do the work, and as I was packing up my backpack at the end of the day they'd come up to me and quietly say that if I wanted to talk, they were always there - as if I could ever find the words to connect the whirlpool inside me to their calm-water lives.

One time one of them said to me, "I understand that I can't understand what you're going through. But sometimes talking helps." That's what Tohru's saying. "I know I can't understand. But I am going to try. Because if that means anything, anything at all, it will be worth it."

-/-/-

Brit pulls me into the kitchen with her as we're setting up for dinner. "Are you okay?" she says.

"Yeah, I'm great." It sounds sarcastic, even though I don't mean it to.

I open to fridge to get an orange juice, but she blocks me getting to the cupboard. "Did something happen?"

"No. Nothing new, just... I dunno, some anxiety issues and stuff, but that happens to me sometimes. It's nothing."

She backs away from the cupboard a bit, eyes downcast, like she's trying to take back the uncharacteristically assertive action. "Do you know... why you're anxious?"

I can't help but laugh. "School ending. Everyone leaving. Being stuck with my dad if I don't get into art college... wow, no, I have no idea. And Akito being weirder than usual - that's another thing that's not getting to me at all."

She takes a seat on Tohru's countertop, and I'm not sure if that means she expects this to be a long conversation or if she's giving up and getting out of my way. "I see what you mean," she admits.

"And like, if it was just one of these things going on, maybe I'd be able to think clearly enough to deal with it. But life never works like that. Everything crashes down all at once."

She nods. "It does go... fast."

"I just want it to stop." I'm pacing, back and forth past the empty dishes, a short line. "And I want it to be over with already. I want to run away, and I want everything to stay the same." The words are kind of falling out of me, like a trickling of water that dislodges a rock, opens the channel and turns into a whole river.

"I know," she says. "It feels like it's out of control. But... it's still your life. Maybe it won't turn out how you plan, but you're still here. That... matters. You can do whatever you want."

"I don't know what I want."

"I don't either. But maybe that's not always such a bad thing. Maybe... finding out what you want to do can be interesting. Everything _is _changing. But that's true for the bad things as well."

I should mention here that Brit's not exactly the person you expect to be spouting out optimism like a teapot full of rainbows and unicorns. She mostly wears black clothes that can't always be described as clean. I've found her skipping class to cry in the hallway on several occasions (I spend a lot of time in the halls, and my teachers are used to conversations like this: "I'm going to the waterfountain." "No, Kyo, you've been to the water fountain 15 times." "Okay fine. I'm going to the washroom." "Do you really need to?" "I just went to the water fountain 15 times, what do you think?"). If you look closely, she has a series of thin, straight white lines on her left arm that sometimes show through the rips in her hoodie.

So I'm listening to her.

I sit down on the counter beside her. "I guess high school isn't really that great," I admit.

"That's an understatement."

"Okay, so it's a high-security prison, only with worse food."

"Still an understatement."

"But afterwards... what? Do we become these douchey, nostalgic suburbanites, reminiscing about the Best Days Of Our Lives? Do we just give up and resign ourselves to making our parents' mistakes all over again?"

"We could. Or... we could make our own. Learn from them. We could start to understand things better."

"Why bother understanding things we don't like?"

"So we can change them."

It's so simple and clear I can't think of anything to reply. I stare at her for a moment, like I'm seeing her for the first time. The contradiction of her fidgeting hands and off-balance posture and mouth given to half-smiles and laughter, her bright black-brown eyes that can shine with tears or with energy.

"Kyo! Brit! What are you guys doing in there?" Jazzy's voice rings out from the next room, followed by laughter.

"We should go back," I say, my eyes darting away from her.

"Yeah," she says.

"But, uh."

"Yeah?"

"About Akito. What do you think...?"

"I don't know." She sighs. "I don't know what's going on."

"I thought you knew everything."

"I know everything about working at Value Village and skipping journalism class. Other than that, no. Not at all. But... I think whatever Akito's going through, it's her business." Those damn pronouns again. "We can do what we can to support her, but really she's the only one who can control if she's going to be all right."

"I guess," I say. "I wish I could do something – for Tohru, I mean. I hate feeling powerless."

"I know what you mean. I don't think you can help someone unless they want help, though."

"That's probably right. But I hate it."

"So do I. Tohru's lucky to have a friend like you." She jumps down from the counter. "And so is Akito."

Before I have a chance to reply, she's out of the kitchen. I follow her back to the party, bringing the plates she said we were going to get in the first place.

-/-/-

Tohru's older friends – Caylee, Ritsu, Daniel and a black haired guy I've never seen before – show up just as we're serving dinner – turkey, yams, soba with tofu, and a horrifying vegetarian mutant-food called tofurkey. Tohru and the new guests hug, and then introductions go around the table. Apparently no one else knows the black-haired guy either, whose name is Chad. He's brought a bottle of wine as a party gift, which is kind of weird considering the host of the party is 17 and he's like, twenty-four. But Tohru thanks him politely and offers wine to whoever wants it, though she doesn't take any herself.

I decline too – I'm not familiar with the concept of not-drinking-to-get-blitzed, and there's only enough for one glass per person. Caylee doesn't take any either, and Ritsu says that he is okay not drinking too. Melissa and Yuki don't drink. Everyone else takes some, including Akito. Which wouldn't be much of a point of interest if I didn't remember her saying once that she didn't drink. And if her resemblance to a stick hadn't been increasing day by day. And if I expected she was going to actually eat anything during the meal.

I watch her carefully, and sure enough, she cuts the turkey into smaller and smaller scraps until it looks like confetti, pushes the food around her plate as though she's trying to find the most aesthetically pleasing arrangement, and scoops things onto her fork, brings it up to her mouth, then nods or laughs at something just said while stealthily lowering the food to her plate.

Her hands start to wobble more and more as she does this, drinking more of the wine.

Then she catches me looking, and her eyes widen in shock and then narrow accusatorily. She stabs a chunk of yam with her fork and chews it deliberately, never breaking eye contact. She swallows.

And promptly turns an odd shade of greenish-white. "I'll be right back," she says, standing up and walking towards the hall. She moves like she's walking on jello. I don't think anyone else notices, not even Tohru, who's listening to a story of Ritsu's about a concert he went to.

I walk down the hall after Akito, figuring no one will notice. It takes me a while to find him, but when I go up the stairs there he is, a small dark shape collapsed outside the bathroom door. I try to help him up but he makes no move to take my hand, so I push the door open and he crawls inside. He coughs, and for one horrible moment I'm sure he's coughing up blood, but then I realize the red drops spattered on the floor are wine. I wordlessly hold back his hair as he loses the rest of the alcohol into the toilet.

He coughs hard, then seems okay. He stands, much steadier on his feet, and washes his face in the sink. He's still very pale.

"Thanks," he says.

"It's okay," I say.

"I'm sorry," he says – I mean, she says.

"Thanks," I say, which doesn't make much sense but is the only thing I can think of.

"I really don't mean to be such a mess."

"Yeah," I say. "It's, uh, a messy time... I guess."

"I am trying," she says. "I promise I won't hurt her. I just... this being okay thing – I'm not used to it. I think, maybe... I make things fucked up because that's all I'm familiar with. I'm sorry, I don't know why I'm telling you this. I must still be kind of drunk."

With how sick she was, there's no chance there's a drop of wine left inside her. But I let it go. "It's okay," I say. She starts to walk back down the stairs, and I call back to her, "If you want to talk sometime, I'm always here."

It sounds absolutely ridiculous. After the words are out I want to smack myself.

She rolls her eyes and laughs, but the laugh sounds kind of like, maybe, it's forced. I don't know whether that means she's too upset to really find it funny, or if a part of her wants to believe me. "Sure," she says, and goes back to the party.

I walk a step behind, just in case she stumbles on the stairs, but she doesn't.


	21. XIX: One More Time With Feeling

**Deconstruction**  
**XIX: One More Time With Feeling**

Chapter title comes from a song by Regina Spektor. This chapter deals with themes of eating disorders and mental illness, and if you find this triggering please be careful to take care of yourself and your wellbeing (and please message me if you would like a summary of the chapter).

This chapter is definitely one of the most meaningful to me so far. I would like to cite the book _Wasted _by Marya Hornbacher as an inspiration and as one of the most well-written books on eating disorders I have read, as well as one of the most powerful books I have ever read period.

**Akito**

i.

I see my future as a million photographs: myself, older, what I could be.

And every decision I make, a hundred of those photographs burst into flames. Sometimes I wake up intensely aware of the ashes falling around me, so that I can't see anything but blackness. I lie under a blanket of ash that pins my limbs to my sides, and I just want to hold the photographs in my hands and flip through them, organize and lock them away, safe, forever.

But the decision to stay in bed and not move is still a decision, and cancels out any other thing I could have been doing. The photographs catch fire between my fingers.

When I think of myself ten years from now, sometimes I see a million photographs. Other times I see only blank black space. I don't know which scares me more.

I could be anything. But not everything. And that makes me want to be nothing.

ii.

Tori drives me away from the city. We pass the mall where I met Tohru's friends. The patio where I first saw her. It's the last couple months in reverse. There's the restaurant Tori took me to celebrate my first day living here.

"You're too thin," he says as white noise tumbles past our windows.

"I'm sorry," I say. "I've been busy. Distracted."

"I've seen you like this before." His tone isn't exactly accusatory. He says it the way people talk about dark clouds overhead – no one's fault, but not a good sign.

"I know."

"You don't have to do this."

"Yes, I do."

iii.

I have to talk to That Woman. I wish I didn't. I wish Tori, or Tohru, had told me not to go. I wish she'd written me another letter to revoke the invitation. But it's my choice, which means I don't have a choice at all. If I go, no matter how bad it is, I find out what happens next. I get to see another set of photographs. If I don't, I'm trapped in my head with my lack of answers.

So here I am.

iv.

Tori says, "Be careful."

"I am."

"No, you're not."

I know what he thinks, but I don't have an eating disorder. There's nothing disorderly about what I do. I live for routine – literally. My system of numbers, plans, measurements, is a string that pulls me through one day to the next.

I didn't trip and drop the pieces of my life, so that when I went to gather them up I was stuck with a big out-of-order mess. I constructed this myself, painstakingly glued all the pieces into place and made the picture I've got now.

I worked and worked and worked to get here. I used logic and planning and trial and error. I found out that skipping meals makes the whirlpool of anxiety swirling around me loosen its grip just a little bit. I found out that if there's nothing about myself I like, I can at least make it so there's less to dislike.

It gives me something to be proud of. Or maybe not proud, but less ashamed. Like each millimeter the needle on the scale moves closer to zero promises I'm a little bit closer to feeling like a human being. Or to just not feeling.

Logic. Order.

If I did have an eating disorder that would all be bullshit, of course. Self-deception. Delusions. And Tori _is _right – I've dropped too much weight too quickly, and this rate of disintegration isn't sustainable. But after this meeting with That Woman – once I resolve the major source of anxiety in my life – I'm going to stop.

Not entirely, of course – as I said, routine keeps me alive. But I'll slow down enough that the edges of my vision don't blur to black when I spend too long on me feet, and so that I can walk past the Pizza Hut on the way to school without all my thoughts rushing towards bingeing (I haven't, there, yet; but the fact that I want to makes me ill).

I'll slow down enough so that I can live. And so that Hatori won't worry anymore.

No, that's not possible. Hatori always worries.

v.

"Call me if you need anything," Hatori says as he stops the car outside the tea shop.

"I will." And I step outside, nervous-sick through my whole body, like an undersea animal washed up on the shore and unable to breathe.

In a way that's a good thing. I dedicate all my thought to inhale, exhale. Step step step on the snowy pavement. Each moment staccato, not connected to what comes next.

Chimes resonate through the shop as I pass through the door, and she's there, sitting at a table with a laminated menu in her hands. She looks up through her dark hair and I see her seeing me. "Akito," she says. I nod because my mouth, my throat, have forgotten how to make words.

"Please sit down."

I do. Not too far from her, because I don't want her to think I'm being rude. But not close either. Like the air around each of us is charged, and if we get too close, something will explode.

"Thanks," I say. It's hard to keep my voice calm, but I've had years of practice. "How are you?"

Her deep dark eyes fix on me. "It's good to see you again."

"Thanks," I say. Again.

A waiter comes to take our order and I ask for the chamomile tea. No caffeine – I haven't been sleeping lately. Ren orders the green tea.

"Hatori tells me you are living on your own," she says.

"Yes. I am going to school in the city, and I have a job at the mall."

"Have you kept in touch with the family?"

"Kind of. Not really. Just Hatori."

"I suppose I should have suspected." Her voice is flat. It's been flat this whole time, and I don't know what it means. Sometimes, when I lived with her, she would get detached immediately before bursting out into... rage or sadness or _something. _But this is too long, she wasn't... muted, for so long into the conversations we used to have, if you could even call them conversations.

It occurs to me she must be pretty heavily medicated.

"Are you still staying at the hospital?" I ask, before realizing the question might set her off.

But she just nods. "For the next few months. I am working on plans to move into a house after that. We found a place near your aunt and uncle."

The waiter comes back and sets down two steaming teapots, and two small clinking cups. I thank him and he leaves.

I turn back to That Woman. "I still need to finish school."

"I'm not asking you to move back in." She pours a long stream of green tea into her cup and stares at the swirling liquid in front of her.

"Oh. Who... did you mean, when you said 'we'?"

"The doctors are helping me to make plans."

"Oh. That's good."

"You could visit sometime. If you would want that."

"Yes, maybe. That could be... good."

It's almost like I feel younger, except this isn't how I felt when I was young. The emotions I associate with my childhood are mainly anger and fear, so strong I felt them burn through to the surface of my skin. The emotions I associate with her.

And now... they're not really here. This thin, pale woman looking at her tealeaves isn't going to hurt me. I'm safe. I'm safe. I've based my whole life on getting away from her, and now... I guess I did. I was running from something, someone, that no longer exists.

It feels free. And empty.

Now what do I do?

"So, you're okay now?" I say.

She rotates the teacup in her hands. Her long black sleeves make her arms look even thinner, like shadows of trees branching into her fingers. I think of the shiny white scars beneath the thin fabric, and I remember how she scared me with her capacity to feel so much and so little at the same time. Scares me because she's like me.

"Something like that," she says quietly. She looks up at me and it's like she's seeing past all my carefully chosen tones, past the years we've spent apart and all the work I've put into constructing an image. Like my studying and dieting, all the measures I've taken to be independent and in-control, don't really mean much, and she's looking straight at the identity-confused little kid standing in the corner and staring at their hands like they don't know what to do with them.

"It's hard, some days," she says. "And sometimes it's not. Some days make me forget how hard it gets – and then I'll wake up barely able to move and not wanting to think. But then I think of him... and he'd want me to live, wouldn't he?"

The question isn't rhetorical. She really wants to know, truly believes I might have the answer.

That's how she was able to see through me – by taking down all her own facades and letting me see into her the same way.

But I don't want to see her. I want a monster. I want a clear narrative. An antagonist. Clarity. Not a confused, ill person who messed up. She hurt me. She ruined my life.

And now she's asking me about my father. About the person we both loved so much, and now he's gone. She thinks I know the answer.

And I do.

"Yes," I say. "Of course he would. He loved you."

I'd never understood it. How someone as kind, and smart, and _good _as him could love her. A monster. A mess.

A person. As much as I hate – as much as it _hurts _– to admit it... she's just a person. Like me. Like him. And he saw something in her to love.

I can't forgive what she did. I physically can't. When she moves suddenly, my body flinches because it expects to be hurt. When I see her, my heartbeat gets jerky and my skin gets cold.

But I don't hate her. As much as it would simplify things if I didn't, I understand, better than I want to, that she and her illness aren't the same entity.

She's not a minor character. She doesn't exist on the periphery of my story, as a villain or as some amoral force of nature. She had her own narrative before I came along, where she loved him and he loved her, and her story is still moving, on a winding and confusing path now that he's gone. She's trying. Just like everyone else. No idea what the hell we're doing, but we'll try to do it as best we can.

She smiles. A small, quiet, real smile, devoid of malice. I don't think I've ever seen her smile like this. Or not since I was very young.

"Thank you," she says. "You look just like him, you know."

It's the best thing she's ever said to me. It makes me understand why she'd hated me. It's as close as she's ever come to saying she loves me.

"Thank you," I say. I take a long drink of my tea. It's gone cool and tastes like dandelions, like the smell of fall evenings. Leaves.

"And how are you?" she asks. "Are you okay?" She says it in Japanese. The phrase you use when talking to someone you haven't seen in a long time.

I think about it. It's been a long time since anyone's asked me how I was and I didn't respond automatically. How am I?

Not better as in not sick, but better than I was. Not happy, in that easy day-to-day way, but I have happiness in my life. That sensation of sinking that's been there so much of my life, it's not here now, not all the time. I'm still afraid of what comes next, but a part of me is hopeful.

Okay is a good word for what I am.

"Yes," I say. "I am okay."


	22. XX: Little Lion Man

**Deconstruction**  
**XX:Little Lion Man**

****Happy new year! This chapter title comes from a song by Mumford and Sons. I have written the next chapter and will post it at 60 reviews.

**Yuki**

"Why are you here?"

He sighs. "I suppose I shouldn't have expected a warm welcome."

"_Why are you here?"_

"You see, my brother, I need a place to stay..."

"Go to a hotel."

"Well, incidentally, those require payment –"

"You have a job."

"About that..."

Ayame's hair hangs about him like silver seaweed, and his purple coat bunches up at the bottom where he's buttoned it wrong. Two large suitcases sit on the doorstep on either side of him.

I groan. "What do you want me to do?"

"Actually, I was wondering if our mother might be home."

"Is she ever?"

"I suppose not." He looks down at his (shiny, silver) shoes – even at his most dishevelled, he's incredibly flamboyant - then up at me. "How have you been, Yuki?"

"You think you can just show up out of the blue and ask me that?"

"No, but... I thought maybe it would be a start."

"You really don't understand people, do you?"

"If people were dresses –"

"They're not."

"No. I suppose not."

He twists a lock of hair around his finger, watches it, mesmerized. The wind buffets him with a burst of snow and he cringes.

Hoping I won't regret this decision, I say, "Come. I'll make you some tea."

He perks up like a plant receiving a much-needed watering. "How kind! I am most grateful, dear brother!"

"I'm not you 'dear brother'. I just – you looked cold."

He carefully surveys the living room, then the kitchen as we wait for the water to boil. His eyes flicker slowly across the furniture, television, cabinets, a small painting of a tree. "She's not home very often, is she?"

"Busy campaigning."

"You're not home often, either."

"Not when I can avoid it."

"I like what you did with your hair." He indicates the violet streak.

"Thanks."

"She didn't mind?"

"Didn't seem to notice."

He nods. The kettle's song vibrates through the room, and I pour a stream of water into the tea pot. "Jasmine okay?"

"That would be lovely."

I drop the rolled up leaves into the water, watch them uncurl like wings or like sped-up film of flowers in bloom. The water darkens and the scent of jasmine fills the room, brings life to the white walls which always smell faintly of disinfectant.

I pour Ayame a cup. "Thank you." He breathes deeply of the steam, smiles, sips. Pinky raised out as he holds the cup.

People used to ask me if my brother was gay. I always said no, though Ayame and I never really talked about these things – and seeing as my brother talked about _everything, _I felt I should probably respect him not wanting to bring up this topic. From what I've seen, Ayame is more like a magpie – drawn to anything shiny and new.

When he lived here, he'd bring home girls with expensive alternative hairstyles, boys with clothing in radioactive hues – but he never gave any indication of romantic involvement, with any of them. Mostly they'd pour over the fashion diagrams of Ayame's, which consumed every inch of table space, ooh and ah at magazines and Fashion TV, keep me awake by talking loudly all night about various designers.

Honestly, I think my brother is too self-absorbed to have much interest in anyone else.

I sit down opposite Ayame, take a long drawl of tea and swirl the taste of jasmine around my mouth. Swallow. Say, "Okay. now can you tell me – slowly – what's going on?"

-/-/-

Ayame left home when he was sixteen. He'd graduated high school that same year – for all his eccentricities, he was smart, and everyone knew it. That might be why our mom gave up arguing with him – every time she asked him where he'd been, why he had to hang out with "those kind" of people, why he couldn't dress like a normal teenager, he had a logical retort. He had his A average and his internship in the fashion industry, his eye rolls at the slobbishness of "normal" teenage couture. His late-night parties were networking, and his strange friends were the next generation of the fashion elite.

His career was rising rapidly, or at least as rapidly as a teenager's can. Meanwhile, our mother's attempts to boost her standings in the polls seemed futile, despite her long nights at the office and days of manic poster-plastering.

When Ayame was in high school, the two of them had resolved to ignore each other, which was for the best – I still remembered her fury at twelve-year-old Ayame, for his attempt to build a castle out of the cookware. The crashes of pots on the kitchen floor, the bass to the treble of my family's shouting.

Ayame was the lucky one. I was quieter, agreeable, calm – a state Ayame couldn't achieve unless he decided to start sneaking vast quantities of our mother's Zoloft. I was the one who got dragged along to political dinners and photoshoots – the evidence of her family values.

I was sent to etiquette classes, advanced lessons in math and science, given a required list of Great Novels to read. To this day, I can tell you which soup spoon to use for the first course, the cubes of the numbers up to 15, the primary theme of The Great Gatsby. I can converse political theories (avoiding the topic of whether or not I agree with them), ask any mayor in the province about their family members by name, answer any questions the teachers throw at me, and get top marks in English discussions without having to make notes.

Talking to other teenagers is a lot harder. I know... I can come across as a snob. I'm aware of that, and I want to fix it – but I'm not really sure how one goes about doing that. I don't mean to show off in class. I don't mean to suck up when I say hello to the teachers. I don't mean to ignore anyone when I'm quiet around my classmates. I just... don't know what to say.

At home, Ayame blasted music on his speakers while copying photos out of fashion magazines, modifying the outfits to far more complex than their original forms, adding ruffles and ribbons and layers that Victorian royalty would have considered excessive. I'd press my ear to the wall that divided our rooms, feel the thrum of bass against my ear and listen to the dance of lyrics between guitar strings, mixed with the scratch of his pencil.

One day, I got brave and went right up to his door to listen. The song was Days and Days by Tegan and Sara. I remember because the words were quiet, sad-hopeful, like confessing a secret, and they voice pulled me closer, made me listen. The recording was live, and her voice got strained, rough as the song went on, and somehow that made it better – I didn't know a girl could sing that way, didn't know anyone could sing that way, so that the imperfections somehow made their voice more beautiful. I didn't know that was... allowed.

Ayame opened the door. My eyes went wide as I looked up at him.

"What are you doing?" he said.

"L-listening," I said, my stutter ruining my attempt at nonchalance.

I expected him to laugh, or, for some reason, to be mad. Instead he withdrew his head back into his room, said "Come in," and let me sit on the edge of his bed and listen while he sat at the computer and put the shading on various layers of the plan for a dress.

Music was the only thing Ayame and I ever had in common. It was something I could ask him about without feeling stupid or like I was annoying him – something he could talk about as though he was genuinely happy to be asked his opinion, rather than irritated that his younger brother was taking his concentration away from the miniscule details he'd be sketching onto a coat or gown.

He introduced me to everything from The Cure to Alanis Morissette to Metric to Spoon. The music scene and the fashion scene were intrinsically similar, he explained, in both positive and negative ways. When they're good, they're fun and free and fascinating. At their best, pure self expression. At their worst, empty flash.

That interested me, to know that his elaborate panchromatic creations aspired to be his "pure self-expression", not just flashiness. I wasn't sure whether he succeeded, but I never did understand fashion.

Music, on the other hand, I felt I understood, and I felt the words of these singers, the hum of guitar strings and resonance of piano keys, understood me back. Between my headphones, I was freer than I'd ever felt before. I was the crash of crescendos and the rhyme and rhythm of lyrics. The bass entwined its thump with my heartbeat and made a home inside me.

When Ayame moved away, I can't say I felt a great loss. I would have liked if he'd taken the time to say goodbye to me, of course. Sometimes I even regretted that, when he called me six months later, I hung up on him – but my anger shifts from myeslf to him as soon as I remember he didn't even try to call me back. I missed _something_ I suppose, but that thing wasn't quite him, but rather the idea of having a brother – something I'd been missing since long before he left, when he ignored me for his friends, his diagrams, his world I didn't have the right vocabulary or personality to be a part of.

But in ninth grade, when a girl in my homeroom named Isuzu asked me about what kind of bands I liked, I had an answer.

-/-/-

"Fashion college," I say. "You know that also requires money, right?"

"I intend to procure a job beforehand."

"What _did _go wrong with your last job, anyway?"

He looks into his tea leaves like he's trying to read them. "I'm not sure. The music was good – I obtained the most diverse range of cds I could, and the customers were loyal. There simply... were not a particularly vast number of them." He sighs. "I suppose the public were not quite ready for me."

"Their loss." His eyes mirror the surprise I feel at my own words. "I just mean, if you had good music, it's dumb of them to ignore that just because you're... different."

"Oh Yuki!" He moves towards me so fast he seems to have teleported, pulls me into an embrace that pins my arms to my side. "Dear brother! Such a compassionate soul! I knew you would understand my plight!"

I do my best to disentangle myself. "I _don't_ understand. You're one of the weirdest people I've ever met."

I think of Momiji, Akito, Jazzy. Yeah, Ayame still takes the cake.

I say, "But... weird isn't necessarily bad."

He looks so thrilled the air seems poised to burst into anime sparkles and flowers, but he refrains from hugging me again, thankfully.

"But you know you did a lot of things I can't all at once forgive, right?"

His expression turns suddenly solemn, and he nods. "I can't stay here, you're saying."

"No, I... you need help. Financial help, I mean. You don't have anywhere else to go. Whatever our relationship, I wouldn't feel right kicking you out."

Ayame's face lights up. "How shall I ever repay you?"

My mind wanders for one horrifying moment as it considers how Ayame might try to repay me, most of these situations involving singing and glitter and my friends wearing elaborate outfits and expressions of utter bewilderment. An image of Akito in a feather boa is particularly troublesome.

"Nothing comes to mind," I say. "Besides, it's not really up to me whether you stay here."

He nods, but we both know that's not true. No matter how a son who perspires glitter instead of sweat and styles himself after the Eurovision song contest might reflect on a politician, depriving your own kid of a home looks worse.

I clean my teacup in the sink, transfer it to the dishwasher, put away my coaster. As I'm about to leave the room, Ayame says, "Yuki." I stop. "Thank you."

"Okay."

"I mean it. If you didn't want to give me a chance, I would have understood. But it's wonderful, to have this opportunity. To earn your forgiveness."

_You haven't earned it yet, _I think. But I say, "Okay."


	23. XXI: Waste of Paint

**Deconstruction**  
**XXI:Waste of Paint**

****Thank you so much to the wonderful Leader of the Nargles and the lovely death-note-rules for their reviews! It means a lot to me that you took the time to read and review my story! This chapter title comes from a song by Bright Eyes.

**Akito**

Each time I blink, I see the flashing lights of that night. Feel the ground shift under my feet; the room, my body, distorting. A blacklight whirlpool, spinning and sinking at the same time. My skin nerveless and not-mine, my thoughts not mine; the full-being dizzyness which is alcohol-spiked punch on an empty stomach. And to a person who lives for control, an out-of-mind, out-of-life experience.

I assumed that when I came here, the hardest part would be over. That because I'd decided to apologize, the words would fall from my mouth. Instead, I cough them up like rocks, my throat too small to hold what I'm trying to say. "Imsorry."

He stands in the doorway, blinks.

"I mean –" I inhale. "I'm sorry. I didn't want to hurt anyone. At least, not you. When I lose control, I'm so sure everyone is out to get me, and really, if they were, I couldn't blame them. But they're not – you're not. I mean, you're a good person, is what I'm saying. And I'm sorry, that when it really mattered, I couldn't make myself believe that... make myself believe in good people."

He says, "Okay."

I wait for him to say more, but it doesn't come. I feel my face going red. "Yuki gave me your address," I say.

He says, "Do you want to come in?"

Kureno's house has the colour and smell of flour. I wonder if everything is neatly put away, or if his family just doesn't own many things. We sit down in dark wooden chairs and listen to the gargle of the dishwasher.

"Do you want cake?" he says, in the same toneless voice he says everything in.

It takes me a moment to realize he's not mocking me. "No thanks."

"It was my dad's birthday yesterday."

"You can have cake if you want."

"It's okay."

There's a small bird, a robin, made of soft paper and hanging from the ceiling in front of the window. It's eyes are shakily drawn, one bigger than the other. I wonder if he made it when he was a kid. I watch the robin swing back and forth on its string.

Kureno says, "Did you believe it?" When I don't answer he clarifies, "What you said that night, I mean."

I knew what he meant. "Yeah," I say.

Another long silence.

I say, "But I don't believe it anymore."

"I'm sorry."

"For what?"

"That I gave you the impression that I would... hurt you. Like that. Or at all. I... you know I wouldn't do that, right?"

"I know. You're not the one who has to apologize."

"I'm still sorry."

"I just get... scared, sometimes. Not because of anything outside me, just... scared. And when it happens, I can't think straight. And then I do things that scare me even more."

"Is it getting any better?"

"No." I look down at my hands, see I'm wringing them. "I mean, I want it to get better. I'm just not sure how. But maybe wanting it is a start?"

"Maybe," he says. I look up at his face, but his dark eyes are as unreadable as ever.

"Am I a bad person?" I hear myself say.

"No," he says, without hesitation.

"I'm just... designed to mess things up."

"That doesn't make you a bad person. It makes you a person."

"Why are you being kind to me?"

"Why not?"

"I think that's pretty obvious."

"It was brave of you to come here."

I don't say anything.

"I want us to be friends, if that's still... possible."

"Why do you forgive me?"

"I never blamed you."

"But what I said about you was horrible. I ruined your reputation, I hurt you!"

He looks past the bird, out the window. A blue spruce sways in the wind. "That's what people do. We accidentally hurt each other. What we do after is what counts."

I say, "I'm not sure I can think that way."

He shrugs. "That's okay."

"Is there anything you're not okay with?"

"I don't like when you're sad."

"You barely know me."

"I don't like seeing anyone sad."

"Oh."

He says, "I know we haven't talked very much. But in a way, I feel connected to you. I think... you're a better person than you think you are."

"Thanks," I say, not knowing how else to reply.

"Do you think maybe we used to know each other? In some other form?"

"I don't know. I don't really believe in stuff like that."

"Fair enough. I'm glad you came to visit. It was kind of you."

"Thanks. I'm... trying to be kinder." I laugh, not wanting him to believe me. The same way I laugh when I talk about how messed up my family is, how ugly my face is. Not because anything is funny, but so I can soften hating myself from a terrifying void into a shallow joke, because I definitely can't completely rid myself of something so central to my thought process.

"Are you sure you don't want anything to eat?"

I suddenly feel like I'm gong to cry if I open my mouth, so I shake my head no.

He says, "Sorry. I get it from my mom – my family shows caring with food."

I laugh, for real this time. The wave of emotion has passed as quickly as it appeared. "It's okay. Thanks, but I need to get going. Happy birthday to your dad."

"Thanks. I'll tell him," says Kureno. He stands to walk me to the door. "Akito?"

"Yeah?"

"Are we friends now?"

"I don't know. Something like that."

"Okay. Cool."

-/-/-

The next few weeks, I spend most of my time with Tohru. The undecorated walls of my apartment have become constrictive, and the radio fails to fill the empty space. Tohru and I go over to her house, study and watch movies in her house. I explain ionic bonds to her, and though I'm not exactly the type to ask for help, she asks if she can read my essays, seeming genuinely interested, and she asks me about my ideas while occasionally pointing out missed commas.

"Your thoughts are so fast, " she says, "in your writing."

"Sorry," I say, for some reason.

"It's not a bad thing. But it can be a bit hard to follow for people who don't think like you. See, if you break this sentence into two, and then explain the examples, it's easier to see how they connect. But the idea's really cool."

I make a few keystrokes on her computer, shift the letters around. At first I didn't want to do my homework here, as my typing is laughably slow. But she never points this out, and coming here is definitely better that typing all my essays at the library.

She leans in towards the screen, then rests her head back on my shoulder, her arms around me as we share the only chair in the room. "Yeah, that sounds really good."

The first few days, Taro continually barges into Tohru's room to "check up on us." Eventually he catches up kissing while _Stardust _plays forgotten on Tohru's laptop, and although I freeze, Tohru either doesn't notice him or doesn't care. Taro's face turns bright red and he backs out, closing the door loudly. For several moments, Tohru and I stare in silence at the empty space where he had been. Then, simultaneously, we laugh.

Taro's check-ins stop after that.

Tohru's grandpa invites me for dinner most nights, for which I am both thankful and annoyed. Being around so much good food makes me want to binge, but being around other people makes me want to not eat at all, for fear I'll do something wrong, eat too much or too little and make it clear I'm not like them.

When Tohru smiles at me I feel like I'm betraying her, because even as I smile back a part of me is obsessing over calories. Knowing Tohru cares about me makes me want to be healthy, but also terrifies me because not obsessing control could mean losing it completely. And if I fall into excesses and show her the worst sides of me I'll be left utterly alone again, this time with a clear idea of everything I've lost. And food is about the easiest way of losing control. If I gain weight, there's no way I can hide it, not with us touching all the time.

But if I go too far the other way and end up in the hospital, she'll know how fucked up I am. That even in our closest moments, when there should be nothing on my mind but her, a part of me is thinking about food. That even if I'm able to get my body healthy, these thoughts have been in my mind too long to ever go away, and I'm not sure I even want them too - they've been a part of me so long I can't picture living without them. A cruel friend you keep in your life because you're afraid to be alone.

But Tohru and her grandpa are kind to me, and gradually, I get used to the spot at their table. I carefully fill my plate with the same amount as Tohru, deciding that will ensure I eat the appropriate amount. I cut everything into as small pieces as I can, eat them one at a time so I won't look like I'm stuffing my face. Tohru and her grandfather ask each other about their days and their plans. They do their best to include me in the conversation and I do my best not to add translate each spoonful into calories.

One day over mashed potatoes, Tohru says, "Kyo really likes the Christmas present you made him."

"Oh," I say, "that's good." I'd given him a framed photograph of the three of us, inside a frame I'd decorated with fake gold foil and fragments of fall leaves. I'd been simultaneously proud and embarrassed of my creation, as I usually am with artwork – even a simple design puts a part of you, some of your thoughts and abilities, on display to be judged.

I add, "I liked his, too."

In reality, I'm not quite sure what to make of Kyo's gift. He'd sketched a portrait of me, in detail I had to admit was amazing, though, I think, inaccurate. Through the window of paper, the face that looks out at me is thin, eyes bright and hair shiny, and my first thought was that he'd drawn me more attractive than I really am in order to mock my imperfections. More than once, I took the drawing into the bathroom with me and held it up to the mirror beside my face, unable to see exactly what was wrong with it, except that I knew I didn't look that good. Eventually I dumped a pile of polaroids on top of the portrait and had almost forgotten about it by the time Tohru brought it up.

For Tohru, I got a white scarf which I'd dyed with bright streams of colour, thinking it would look good with her black clothes. She made me a small blue-beaded bracelet and a ticket to the play she's working on, the school's production of _The Wizard of Oz._

When Tohru's not home, usually she's at school, painting sets and helping the Wicked Witch of the West get over her stage fright by practicing lines with her for hours on end. I help out with the painting occasionally, brushing green onto the outline of a tree because I want to be around Tohru and I don't want to feel useless.

One time, when a particularly long rehearsal keeps us at school until 9:00 p.m., while we crunch through the snow on our way to the bus stop, I ask Tohru why she doesn't want to be in a play.

She says, "I am in it."

"I meant acting."

She shrugs. "It's not really my interest. I love listening to the plays. I love how they change and fit into place to become ready to present. Meeting the actors, and decorating sets, and being part of something. But writing makes me more alive."

It's a clear night, something rare in the city. The stars shine like fragments of glass.

I say, "Can I read one of the things you've written, sometime?"

She says, "Of course. But not yet."

"How come?"

"I haven't finished anything. But when I do, you can read it."

"Promise?" I say, gently squeezing her hand through her mitten.

"Of course," she says. "It's only fair. You are a part of my writing."

"What do you mean?"

She smiles. "You're a part of my life." She kisses me, then puts her arms around me in a hug. I hold her close to me. The yellow headlights of the bus split the night, and I kiss her one last time before turning to walk back home.


End file.
